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NATHAN HALE 
1776 



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Nathan Hale to his Brother Enoch 



Collection of Rev. Edward Everett Hale 



NATHAN HALE 

1776 



BIOGRAPHY AND MEMORIALS 



BY 



HENRY PHELPS JOHNSTON, A. M. 




NEW YORK 
PRIVATELY PRINTED 

1901 



E. 



Edition limited to 400 copies 
On Japan paper 25 copies 



\\zSr^ 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Copiea Received 

OCT. 26 1901 

COPVBIOHT ENTRY 

CLASS Ct. XXa No. 

/ 7 7 / g" 

COPV 3. 



Copyright, 1901, by 
Henry Phelps Johnston 

^11 Rights Reser-ved 



THE DEVINNE PRESS, 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 



FOR the earliest " Life " of Nathan Hale we are in- 
debted to the late Mr. I. W. Stuart, of Hartford, who 
was fortunately drawn to the subject some fifty years ago, 
when sufficient material for a beginning was conveniently 
at hand, and when it was still possible to glean from per- 
sonal recollections. His work, which appeared in two edi- 
tions in 1856, has long been out of print, and in the interval 
our knowledge of Hale has widened. 

The main source of new information is what we may 
now describe as Hale's correspondence, only a portion of 
which fell under the eye of, or was utilized by, Stuart. 
Limited in amount as this may appear to be, it is more 
than would be looked for in view of the fate that has be- 
fallen so much of the manuscript literature of the Colonial 
and Revolutionary periods. Of the letters of many another 
bright spirit of that time not a line remains. In the case 
of Hale we must deem ourselves happy that at least ten ot 
his own letters have been preserved. Stuart produced four, 
with extracts from two others. Lossing found one at a 
later date, and in the present work three more are added 



vi INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

and all printed, it is believed, in their complete form. 
Future biographers may increase the list. 

This additional material reaches the writer's hand through 
the courtesy of individuals and societies. His acknowledg- 
ments are due to the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, of Rox- 
bury, Massachusetts, for an unpublished letter from his 
granduncle, Nathan Hale, and for other letters credited in 
the Appendix. Dr. Hale's own contributions to the subject 
have been of signal assistance, a valuable addition being 
the diary of his grandfather, Enoch Hale, which throws 
light on the mooted question of Nathan's capture and exe- 
cution. Through the favor of Mr. W. F. Havemeyer, of 
New York, we have Hale's letter with the list of the pro- 
prietors of his New London Academy, also Hale's book 
autograph and other suggestive material from his collec- 
tion. Hale's letter to Miss Christophers is from the col- 
lection of the late John Mills Hale, Esq., of Philipsburg, 
Pennsylvania. Mr. Grenville Kane, of Tuxedo, New 
York, obliges us with a full copy of Hale's interesting 
letter — one of the best specimens from his pen — writ- 
ten to his uncle at Portsmouth. Hale's army commission 
is in the possession of Major Godfrey A. S. Wieners, of 
College Point, Long Island, who kindly permits its repro- 
duction, necessarily in reduced form, in these pages. From 
him also we have a complete copy of Hale's letter with 
his schoolmaster autograph, which we believe is given 
here for the first time in facsimile. Mr. George E. Hoad- 
ley, of Hartford, long interested in everything pertaining 
to Nathan Hale, possesses many of his army receipts and 
various relics from Coventry, as well as most of Stuart's 
manuscripts. From him we have interesting facts respect- 
ing " Alice Adams," to whom Hale was engaged at the 
time of his death. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE vii 

The Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, is the 
fortunate possessor of much the larger portion of the letters 
written to Hale, as well as of his army diary, basket and 
powder-horn. We are under obligations to the society and 
its librarian, Mr. Albert C. Bates, for the free use of the 
papers, from which considerable extracts are given. The 
relics also are reproduced from the originals. At Yale 
University there are reminders of Hale's college life in the 
shape of minutes of his debating society, Linonia, kept in 
his own hand as secretary, and other records bearing on 
the four years of his course. Through the courtesy of 
Professors Van Name and Dexter, librarians, facsimiles 
and copies of some of these papers have been secured, and 
their items help materially in bringing out Hale's person- 
ality. The New York Historical Society, Mr. Robert H. 
Kelby, librarian, contains in its invaluable archives one or 
more British orderly-books which throw light on disputed 
points respecting Hale's capture and execution, and add 
something to our knowledge of the military situation 
which he was endeavoring to unravel for Washington. 
Nothing more important has appeared of late years than 
Lord Howe's order announcing Hale's fate, a facsimile of 
which, through the favor of the society, is here repro- 
duced. The portrait of Captain Montressor, who pre- 
served Hale's last words for us, is from a volume in its 
collection. In the unpublished logs of the British war- 
ships, the Halifax and the Cerberus^ London Record Office, 
we also find important items. 

The illustrations, or group of Hale memorials, in the 
volume are produced by Mr. Edward Bierstadt's process. 

While Mr. Stuart's work is to be appreciated as the 
pioneer biography in the field, we now know that he ac- 
cepted tradition too freely. This was in a sense unavoid- 



viii INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

able. From the material referred to above and other 
sources of information, it has become possible to reverse 
some incorrect impressions. The power of Hale's story 
lies in the simple record. 

College of the City of New York, 
September 21, 1901. 




CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introductory Note v 

I Ancestry and Home — the Hales and the Strongs ... 3 

II Hale in College — Four Years at Yale (i 769-1 773) . . 22 

III Hale as Schoolmaster — at East Haddam and New London . 37 

IV The Lexington Alarm — Hale Joins the Army . . . . 53 

V In Camp Near Boston — Besieging the Enemy 65 

VI With the Army at New York — Defeat on Long Island . 76 
VII Hale in the British Lines — Capture and Execution . . . 89 

Appendix — Hale's Correspondence, Diary, etc 131 



LIST OF PLATES 



Nathan Hale to his Brother Enoch . . . . 

Collection of Rev. Edward Everett Hale 

Hale Headstone, South Coventry Cemetery . 

Hale Monument and Homestead, South Coven- 
try, Connecticut 

Hale's Book Autograph 

Collection of Mr. W. F. Havemeyer 

Yale College in Hale's Day 

Contemporary Dravifing 

Statue of Hale, Wadsworth Athen.s;um, Hart- 
ford 

Hale's Letter with the Schoolmaster Autograph 

■ Collection of Major Godfrey A. S. Wieners 

Hale's Letter to School Proprietors .... 

Collection of Mr. W. F. Havemeyer 

Hale's Powder-Horn and Leaf from Army Diary 

Connecticut Historical Society 

Hale's Commission as Captain 

Collection of Major Godfrey A. S. Wieners 

Statue of Hale, City Hall Park, New York 

Sons of the Revolution 

Hale's Route into the British Lines .... 

Norwalk and Huntington Memorials 

xi 



Frontispiece 
Facing page 



\X 



16 
26 

26 

36 

44 

64 

74 



104 



^ 



/ 



xii LIST OF PLATES 

Order on Hale's Execution Facing page 122 

From Original in New York Historical Society ^ 

y 

Site of Hale's Execution " " 122 

Statue of Hale, Capitol Building, Hartford . " " 130 '^"''^ 

Hale Letters . . • ** "140 

Collection of Rev. Edward Everett Hale 

The Officers Who Preserved Hale's Last Words " " 146 "^-^ 

Captain Montressor, British ; Captain Hull, American 

Leaf from Hale's Linonia Minutes " ** 156 

Yale University 

Hale's Camp Basket, Diary and Horn ... ** "166 

Connecticut Historical Society 

Army Return Reporting Hale's Death ... '* " 186 '' 

Original in Library of Congress, Washington 

Hale's School-houses as Restored : New London, 

East Haddam " ''196 

^/ 
Finis, Variation of Hale's Last Words, 1781 . •' the Index 



NATHAN HALE 




ANCESTRY AND HOME— THE HALES 
AND THE STRONGS 




F the several memorials now 
honoring the name of Nathan 
Hale, it is the earliest one 
that appeals with a special ten- 
derness, that draws us nearest 
to himself and revives the 
associations of his lifetime the 
most faithfully. It is the usual 
reminder — the quaint and primitive headstone in 
the burial-ground of his birthplace, set up about 
a century ago by the loving hands of his family. 
Small and unpretentious, cut from the ledges of the 
neighborhood and hardly observed in the presence 
of the public monument on another site, it holds a 
story in its silent companionship with the graves 
around and the fading landmarks and traditions of 



4 NATHAN HALE 

the old town which most^ of all we would wish to 
read. In its very retirement the spot recalls the 
self-centered life of the community of colonial 
times, in which plain and honest people predomi- 
nated, who filled out the round of daily duties as one 
of the objects of their existence, who held views on 
questions of the day and whose higher care was so to 
live that they might be gathered to their fathers. 
Hale sprung from a community like this. It was a 
society, not any wise exceptional, from which it was 
possible for individual members, young or old, to 
pass out into more absorbing spheres and act a great 
part as ingenuously as they might have acted a lesser 
one at home, quite unconscious of or indifferent to 
the fact that the world was looking on. 

The simple and yet impressive inscription on this 
headpiece may serve as a starting-point or text for 
the biographer : 

Durable stone preserve the monumental record. 
Nathan Hale, Esq., a Capt. in the army of the 
United States, who was bom June 6th, 1755, 
and received the first honors of Yale College, 
Sept., 1773, resigned his life a sacrifice to his 
Country's liberty at New York, Sept. 22nd, 
1776. Etatis 22^ 

There is more to the inscription referring to his 
parents and a younger brother, but in the case of 
Nathan, those who knew him emphasize the two 



ANCESTRY 5 

salient facts of his brief life, that in two fields in 
which he had been left to his own resources, in 
college and in his country's service, he fulfilled all 
and more than could be expected of him. The 
headstone tells us of a young man of gifts and pur- 
pose and promise, which the record from every 
other source amply confirms. 

As for our special and public interest in Hale, it 
centers in the last twenty days of his life. It is 
the interest which common humanity feels and ex- 
presses in an act of rare devotion, where the act is 
performed less from impulse than in response to the 
call of duty fortified by calm reflection and reso- 
lutely followed to the end. There is also added 
the charm of his character and his youth. Scarcely 
turned the age of twenty-one, he rose to the de- 
mands of an extreme occasion and played the man. 
It was in those closing days, after more than a year's 
routine in the army, that he seems to have become 
newly impressed with his obligations to the cause 
he was engaged in. Instead of waiting for oppor- 
tunities of service, he now began to seek them, 
when, unexpectedly, an opportunity more ominous 
than attractive presented itself which he felt that he 
must accept irrespective of consequences. In ac- 
cepting it he sealed his fate. Whatever sentiment 
may attach to the particular mission he undertook, 
we justly regard his sacrifice as an ideal act of pa- 
triotism. With a touching and noble expression of 



6 NATHAN HALE 

regret that he could do no more, he surrendered in 
his country's behalf the most that a man can give — 
his life and his good name. 

Regarding his previous career there would be 
little more to say of him under ordinary circum- 
stances that could not be said of many other young 
men of his day, and which is usually left unsaid. 
History, however, reserves the shining examples to 
herself, and frequently makes one heroic episode con- 
secrate a lifetime. So Hale becomes in a way en- 
deared to us through all his years. The story of 
the youth who could die so bravely and unselfishly 
can never lose its interest and attraction, especially 
if it goes far toward explaining the end ; and enough 
of detail survives to enable us to follow it with a 
fair degree of consistency, and to present the picture 
with some approach to the real outlines. More than 
enough exists to reassure us, were that necessary, 
that posterity has made no mistake in its estimate 
of his personal worth or recognition of his views 
of duty and service, and that the tributes and honors 
to his memory are rightly bestowed. 

If we adopt a favorite method and presume to 
account in part for the qualities which Hale exhib- 
ited through the lives that had been lived before 
him, the subject will present few difficulties. There 
are no gaps in the record of his lineage. Both in 
the paternal and maternal lines it can be traced con- 
tinuously to our American beginnings. It seems 



Hale Headstone, South Coventry Cemetery 















^\ 




Di']V.bfe ..l^oiie preler\;e the moniiraeiv 
M/tii record. Natfen Hale Efc|. a 
Ctpt ill the army of the United ■■- 
Slates; who was horn JuntS 6 - 1755,:^ 
and receiVd tJie firft honors of ^'ale 
Colfee Sept, 1773. refjgnd his life a. 
facf if ) te to h i s c ou nt vy s ii ber ty at 
New York Sept. 22- 1776. Etatis22-. 
Hr. Richard Hale Jun-. boii Feb. 20 - 
T 757 died of «) con fu nipt) on m the 
If land of St. Euaatia Yeb. ti- i793- 
aged -^-7 "I'e^^rs! they were fon sol Deac 
Ridard a Mrs. Di fa be ifi Hale of Gov- ^ 
er/i^y. Two Daugtei's of Mi. Pxichard 
Hale lur/- anJ Hfs>'Jary Hale.one 
jia/ivd Hary born July 6- 1787 ^^^^'^ 
died De-. 10-1791 llie oiher, Eo'ly^l 
born 1^]] ,2/,' 579-c and died OU '2'\ 






lien- 



, ,,_. jocUc-s: ir::eD !x-)\caffi A 




ANCESTRY 7 

likewise to contain its full proportion of individual 
histories, in which one may detect a thread of 
family characteristics or gauge the blood and fiber of 
the stock represented. As in a hundred other cases, 
also, here and there, in the direct and collateral 
branches, at different points and in different genera- 
tions, we meet with some fine development. Some 
strain of superiority or rare worth will be found as- 
serting itself in the person of a distinguished judge, 
an eminent divine, a public benefactor, or again in 
the person of a youthful patriot. Ancestry in those 
days meant much. The good people not only be- 
lieved in the transmission of qualities and observed 
resemblances, but they highly valued the living 
influence of one generation upon another — an influ- 
ence which modern conditions are gradually lessen- 
ing. Neighbors then, more often than not, were 
relatives. Hale could remember his great-grand- 
father, and of his grandmother's graces and guar- 
dianship over him he himself speaks with appreciation 
and feeling. There is material here for the study 
of heredity and the influence or predominance of 
individualism in our national growth. 

The ships that sailed into Massachusetts Bay 
in the memorable years between 1630 and 1640 
brought over what local historians like to call much 
"precious freight." They brought more than one 
stout heart and devoted group, which Old England 
could ill afford to spare, but in whom New Eng- 



8 NATHAN HALE 

land found her making. Among these first comers 

— commonwealth builders as they were to prove — 
were the ancestors of Nathan Hale. The names of 
his father, Richard Hale, and his mother, Elizabeth 
Strong, take us back to their great-grandparents, the 
Hales and the Strongs, who followed Governor 
Winthrop from England to Boston to help break 
ground for the new settlements on the Charles 
River and the Connecticut. In later years their 
names appear again at this point in the wilderness 
or that town on the coast, showing that they took 
their part abreast with the others in the active work 
of colonization. 

On the father's side the immigrant was Robert 
Hale, who came of the old and knighted family of 
Hales in Kent. That he cared little for crests or 
coats of arms and much more for a new start in 
life and a freer atmosphere may perhaps be inferred 
from his leaving England at one of the earliest op- 
portunities. Making Charlestown, Massachusetts, 
his permanent home, he assisted in founding the 
church there in 1632, and became deacon, select- 
man, ensign, and surveyor. Evidently an energetic 
and thrifty individual — in occupation a blacksmith 

— he kept increasing his acres until he owned fields 
and lots on Charlestown Neck, along the Mystic 
River, and adjoining the roads in the vicinity which 
were to become the scene of some lively warfare in 
1775. One of his neighbors, following him two 



ANCESTRY 9 

or three years later, was that George Bunker whose 
famous hill stands in the new world for all and 
more than Marathon's mound has so long stood in 
the old. It was to remain for a descendant of his 
in the fifth generation — the young captain of 1776 
— to assist in ridding the ancestral farm of an 
enemy's presence. Robert Hale's prosperity and 
intelligence no doubt led him to share in the desire 
which the leading colonists felt to educate preachers 
for their multiplying churches on their own soil, 
and we presently find him sending his eldest son, 
John, to Harvard College. 

This was the Rev. John Hale, graduated in 
1657, who was the first and long-settled pastor at 
Beverly, just beyond Salem, Massachusetts. He is 
described as a representative man, of recognized 
abilities, generous disposition, public-spirited, and, of 
course, a Calvinist of the prevailing robust type. 
The occasional hardships and misfortunes of his 
people he made his own. In 1676, when King 
Philip's war caused distress, he directed the select- 
men of the parish to dispose of ^6, about one 
twelfth of his year's salary, for the general defense. 
In 1690, he went as chaplain on Phips' disastrous 
expedition against Quebec, not only to fight the 
annoying Frenchman, but also to watch over a 
company of his own young parishioners. Inevi- 
tably, with Salem so near, he was identified with 
the witchcraft trials, but latterly, through a personal 



lo NATHAN HALE 

experience, was convinced of the grave error of the 
proceedings, and in 1697 issued a "Modest Inquiry*' 
into the nature of the delusion. "Such," he writes, 
"was the darkness of that day, the tortures and 
lamentations of the afflicted, and the power of 
former precedents, that we walked in the clouds 
and could not see our way;" but, as he continues in 
another connection, "observing the events of that 
sad catastrophe. Anno 1692, I was brought to a 
more strict scanning of the principles I had im- 
bibed, and by scanning, to question, and by ques- 
tioning at length to reject many of them." His 
revulsion against the painful business, even though 
partial, could only have deepened his human sym- 
pathies and drawn him nearer to his flock. Upon 
his death or earlier, his family, as in so many other 
instances, dispersed to find new fields. One son 
remained at Beverly, another became a pastor and 
settled at Ashford, Connecticut, and a third son, 
Samuel, moved along the coast, first to Newbury- 
port and then to Portsmouth. 

The line we are following comes down through 
this Samuel Hale. There is little recorded of him, 
but it is to be noticed that, like his father and grand- 
father, he was represented by a son at Harvard, also 
named Samuel, who remained at Portsmouth, and 
of whom we shall hear again as a good citizen, de- 
fender of his country, and notable schoolmaster. 
Another son, named Richard, of more interest to 



ANCESTRY 1 1 

us, fell into the general drift, as it would appear, 
looked about for richer soil, perhaps a less rigorous 
climate, and with other wide-awake farmers settled 
in a new locality. About 1744, a young, unmarried 
man, he found his way into Connecticut and made 
choice of his future home in the town of Coventry, 
some twenty miles east of Hartford. This Richard, 
fourth from the immigrant, was the father of our 
Nathan Hale. 

Coventry, Connecticut, Nathan's birthplace, was 
a town laid out in 1708, by authority of the General 
Assembly of the colony, from a tract acquired by 
private proprietors from the tribe of Mohegan In- 
dians. It had been deeded by the sachem "Joshua'* 
to residents of Hartford, who offered its farm lands 
and plots to new settlers. The older towns had 
been settled by groups of families as a measure of 
safety, while the later ones depended more on indi- 
vidual comers. But they all grew apace, some 
towns throwing out others beyond them and within 
easy reach — the meeting-house always the center 
— until in the brief period of one hundred and fifty 
years, or by the time of the Revolution, the population 
of New England had increased to over seven hundred 
thousand, compactly placed, self-governed, homoge- 
neous, and fit to enter upon national life. For these 
reasons this section could do more and suffered less 
than other colonies in the struggle for independence 
whenever the enemy threatened it with vengeance. 



12 NATHAN HALE 

And how these people, we may note in passing, 
seem to have clung even in the third generation to 
the traditions of home life in the mother-country ! 
It was no mere coincidence that the Connecticut 
Assembly named the town in question after old 
Coventry in England. The town names in the cen- 
tral and eastern counties in this colony, as in Massa- 
chusetts, and in scarcely less degree in other col- 
onies, tell of the genuine interest they long retained 
in the birthplaces of their grandparents, whatever 
they may have thought of revenue acts, commercial 
monopoly, and ministerial appointments ; and in 
nearly every household could have been found, as 
heirlooms distributed by gift or the wills of the first 
settlers, more than one tangible piece of evidence 
that Old England was not altogether forgotten by 
the New. So not only will one see on the map the 
names of Ashford and Bolton and Canterbury and 
Chatham and Chester; of Colchester, Coventry, 
Derby, Durham, Essex, Glastonbury, and Guilford; 
of Hartford, Kent, Lyme, Milford, New Haven, and 
New London; of Norwalk, Norwich, Pomfret, 
Preston, Stamford, Stratford, Windsor, and Wood- 
stock; but in their homesteads he would have seen at 
that date the chairs and chests, the books and pieces 
of plate, the spoons, dishes, buckles, and quilts, and 
the family Bible, with its precious record of births, 
marriages, and deaths, which their possessors prized 
for their ancestral associations across the sea. 



ANCESTRY 13 

Upon Hale's mother's side the story of descent is 
in some respects a repetition of his father's. That 
young Nathan himself would have dwelt with a 
most affectionate interest on what he knew of it 
may be gathered from some of the last expressions 
we have from his pen. To his brother Enoch he 
wrote from camp : " This will probably find you in 
Coventry ; if so, remember me to all my friends, 
particularly belonging to the family. Forget not 
frequently to visit and strongly to represent my duty 
to our good grandmother Strong. Has she not re- 
peatedly favored us with her tender, most important 
advice? The natural tie is sufficient, but increased 
by so much goodness, our gratitude cannot be too 
sensible." Hale's mother was not then living, but 
in her mother, as just described, we doubtless see 
the temperament which ruled her own household. 
That she was gentle, true, and watchful may be 
readily assumed, and perhaps we perceive some of 
her stronger traits of character reflected and empha- 
sized in those of her son. " Our good grandmother 
Strong" draws us equally to the youth whose love 
and remembrance were deep and manly, and to the 
lineage which produced such womanhood. But the 
story is not exceptional. The Strongs, like the Hales, 
were a typical family through whom, in connection 
with the many others with corresponding or varying 
records, we are enabled to observe the working of 
domestic and social influences in colonial life. 



14 NATHAN HALE 

The head of the line here was Elder John 
Strong, who in the spring of 1630 sailed from Ply- 
mouth, England, in the ship Mary and 'John and 
helped in the founding of Dorchester, south of Bos- 
ton. His numerous descendants — quite a remark- 
able list — are scattered to-day throughout the 
country. Passing on to Taunton and then to Wind- 
sor, Connecticut, he returned to Massachusetts in 
1659, and with a few others, for the third time, 
started a new settlement, which became Northamp- 
ton. His grandsons, Joseph and Elnathan, settled 
in Connecticut, the former at Coventry, about 
171 5, twenty or thirty years before Richard Hale. 
This Joseph, known as Justice Joseph Strong, grew 
up with the place and became a leading townsman, 
filling the offices of treasurer and justice of the 
peace for many years and representing Coventry in 
the General Assembly for sixty-five sessions. Vig- 
orous, both mentally and physically, he could pre- 
side at a town meeting in his ninetieth year. He 
was succeeded in some of his offices and a portion 
of his lands by his son, also Joseph, generally called 
Captain Joseph Strong. In 1724 this Joseph mar- 
ried his second cousin, Elizabeth Strong, daughter 
of Preserved Strong, the "grandmother" referred to 
above ; and it was their eldest daughter, again Eliza- 
beth, fifth from the immigrant, who became the 
wife of Richard and the mother of Nathan Hale. 

Hale's immediate ancestors were thus among the 



HOME LIFE 15 

first inhabitants and co-builders of his native place, 
and exercised no little influence on the gathering 
community. It had received its name in 171 1, and 
by 1775 it ranked as a considerable tov^n in the 
colony. Success seems to have attended the enter- 
prise and hard labors of these families. From the 
town records w^e learn that as early as 1724 Justice 
Strong was able to turn over to his son. Captain 
Strong, a farm of ninety acres, in consideration of 
"parental love and aflfection," and that Richard 
Hale, in 1745, could purchase from Talcott and 
Lathrop, apparently two of the original proprietors 
of the Coventry tract, an extensive farm of two hun- 
dred and forty acres. These lands lay in the south- 
ern part of the survey, or in what is now the separate 
town of South Coventry. The Strong homestead, 
in which Hale's mother was probably born, was 
pulled down a number of years ago, while the Hale 
homestead, which still stands in good condition, is 
understood not to be the original dwelling in which 
Nathan was born, but one dating from about the 
beginning of the Revolution and with which he 
was familiar. 

Of Hale's boyhood and home life we could ex- 
pect to know but little so far as records are con- 
cerned. Those years, and indeed the round of 
domestic experiences, were much alike in the colony 
circles. From glimpses, traditions, and fragmen- 
tary diaries a picture could be drawn which, in its 



1 6 NATHAN HALE 

perspective, would do for all. Early marriages were 
the rule. Hale's father, born February 28, 171 7, 
was twenty-nine; his mother, born February 7, 
1727, was nineteen. They were married in Coven- 
try, May 2, 1746, and lived and died in the place. 
Their son Nathan — to whose memory these pages 
are dedicated — was born June 6, 1755, the fifth 
boy and sixth child in the family of twelve. He 
had eight brothers and three sisters, two dying in 
infancy. David and Jonathan were twins. His 
elder sister, being, like her mother and grandmother, 
the eldest daughter, bore the same name, Elizabeth. 
The other children were Samuel, John, Joseph, 
Enoch, Richard, Billy, Joanna, and Susanna, sev- 
eral of whom married and have descendants living. 
Nathan may have been named after one of the 
Nathans either on the Strong or Hale side of the 
house, with the Scriptural association also in mind. 
On an ample farm in high and rolling country 
near the beautiful Lake Waugaumbaug of the 
Mohegans, and with good neighbors about, the lines 
of the family seem to have been pleasantly cast. 
The responsibilities were great, but bravely met by 
the parents. Of the head of the house it is said 
that "never a man worked so hard for both worlds 
as Deacon Hale." The town and ecclesiastical so- 
ciety confided in him. He held offices from each. 
For a few terms in succession the Coventry depu- 
ties to the Connecticut Assembly were Hale and 



Hale Monument and Homestead, South 
Coventry, Connecticut 




l!3(<^4 AUl 



a 




From Hale's monument to the homestead the 
distance is about three miles. Near the former, 
facing the town green and overlooking the lake, 
stood the old Congregational meeting-house 
which Hale's family attended. It was burned 
down several years ago. The parsonage was a 
few rods south of it. As Hale's father and 
grandfather Strong were deacons of the church, 
and the pastor. Dr. Huntington, Nathan's in- 
structor in his preparation for college, the boy 
was surrounded by all the religious influences 
which New England Congregationalism sought 
to extend. His career, brief as it was, shows 
how far his character was molded by them. 



HOME LIFE 17 

Strong. Of the mother we have already formed 
an impression — certainly a domestic and devoted 
woman, the fitting link between the "good grand- 
mother" and more than one superior child and de- 
scendant. The six things such a family, young and 
old, would have to think of and live for the year 
round were home, farm, church, school, chores, 
play. Stuart, Hale's first biographer, describes it as 
"a quiet, strict, godly household, where the Bible 
ruled and family prayers never failed, nor was grace 
ever omitted at meals, nor work done after sundown 
on a Saturday night." One item would stagger the 
modern parent — not only clothes for twelve, but 
the cloth must be spun at home ! It was so at the 
Hales'. Work on the farm should have gone along 
handily, as there were boys enough to call upon. 
All, of course, had some schooling. Whether 
Nathan and the others attended the original Coven- 
try school-house, which, by town-meeting vote, was 
to be twenty feet long and eighteen feet wide, or a 
later school-house, now transformed into a dwelling, 
is uncertain. By the same vote the schoolmaster's 
wages were fixed at eleven pounds for the winter 
quarter, and the pupils' enjoyment of the term de- 
pended upon his disposition and the depth of the 
snow. The pastimes were the pastimes of to-day 
in the farming towns. "Nathan" — quoting Stuart 
again — "early exhibited a fondness for those rural 
sports to which such a birthplace and scenery na- 



1 8 NATHAN HALE 

turally invited him. He loved the gun and fishing- 
rod, and exhibited great ingenuity in fashioning 
juvenile implements of every sort. He was fond of 
running, leaping, wrestling, firing at a mark, throw- 
ing, lifting, playing ball. In consequence, his in- 
fancy, at first feeble, soon hardened by simple diet 
and exercise into a firm boyhood. And with the 
growth of his body his mind, naturally bright and 
active, developed rapidly. He mastered his books 
with ease, was fond of reading out of school, and 
was constantly applying his information." If, ac- 
cording to present standards, the boys' acquirements 
of that day were simple, perhaps their absorptive 
powers were more active and tenacious. In those 
interesting years young Nathan and his fellows 
could not but have added to the "three R's " and 
their accompaniments the more valuable impres- 
sions and knowledge — more valuable in view of the 
great struggle they were soon to enter — to be de- 
rived from ordinary listening and observation when 
their fathers and elder brothers returned from the 
campaigns against the French to tell of Ticonderoga, 
Crown Point, and Quebec, or when, a little later, 
the Stamp Act brought them all to their feet in 
protest and revolt. 

When Hale was twelve years old he lost his 
mother. She died April 21, 1767, at the age of 
forty. We infer that his future career had already 
been decided upon, or at least that he was to receive 



HOME LIFE 19 

a college education, and no doubt the boy was 
happy in the prospect. If, according to early recollec- 
tions of the family, his mother was more anxious and 
urgent than others in the matter, it is not difficult 
to see what influences beyond her own wishes and 
perhaps intuitive appreciation of Nathan's character 
and talents may have had weight. The representa- 
tion of college-bred men among the Strongs in Con- 
necticut was increasing. Hale's own uncle, his 
mother's younger brother, Rev. Joseph Strong, a 
graduate of Yale College in the class of 1749, was 
at that date the settled pastor over the village church 
of Salmon Brook in Granby, Connecticut, northwest 
of Coventry, while Rev. Nathan Strong, class of 
1742, his mother's second cousin, was settled over 
the north parish of his own town, but a few miles 
away. The latter's son, also Nathan, who was to 
become a distinguished divine in the State, was just 
then, in 1767, a student in the college, where we 
shall meet with him a little later as one of Hale's 
instructors. Another son, Joseph, was preparing to 
enter the same institution. Relationships of all 
degrees were made much of in those days, the more 
so where the relatives were parish ministers; and 
when the Rev. "Uncle" Strong or the Rev. 
"Cousin" Strong was housed over the Sabbath at 
Deacon Strong's or Deacon Hale's, it was an event 
of some social consequence. On these and like oc- 
casions the rising generation would come under 



20 NATHAN HALE 

casual inspection and comment, and if some youth 
in the circle seemed to show both spiritual and in- 
tellectual promise, he might be marked as one to 
succeed the learned elders, and his parents be ad- 
vised to enter him for the profession. The ranks 
of that influential colonial body, the New England 
clergy, were filled much in this way, and in the 
decisions the mothers' views and hopes for their 
sons were not to be ignored. 

However it may have been in this case, we have 
the fact that among the boys of the family Nathan 
and his next elder brother, Enoch, were to go to 
college. Whether they were then, at that early 
age, expecting to enter the ministry, we cannot say. 
There was time enough for a final decision later, 
even after graduation. The present task was prep- 
aration. Except in a few of the larger towns 
where preparatory schools existed, the boys of that 
time were generally fitted for college by the minis- 
ter of their parish. Benjamin Tallmadge, one of 
Hale's classmates, states in his "Autobiography" 
that he and other boys were so prepared by his 
father, pastor at Brookhaven, Long Island. Hale's 
pastor was the Rev. Dr. Joseph Huntington, brother 
of the Hon. Samuel Huntington, subsequently one 
of the presidents of the Continental Congress and 
Governor of Connecticut. He was one of the 
more prominent of the colony ministers, inclined to 
liberality in his theological views and pronounced 



HOME LIFE 21 

in his sympathies with America in the Revolution- 
ary struggle. Reviewing events in an election ser- 
mon after the war, he said: "We once loved Britain 
most dearly, but Britain the tyrant we could not 
love. Our souls abhorred her measures. We rose 
from the dust, where we had been long prostrate. 
Our breasts glowed with noble ardor. We invoked 
the God of our fathers and we took the field." 
The old parsonage still stands in altered shape on 
Coventry hill, and there without doubt young Na- 
than and his brother Enoch regularly recited to 
Mr. Huntington from such Latin authors as Eutro- 
pius, Nepos, Virgil, Cicero, and Horace — John 
Trumbull, the painter, who fitted at Norwich 
about the same period, stating that these were the 
books he had to study — while at times the parson 
must have wandered from the lessons to denounce 
the policy of the mother-country toward the colo- 
nies and inspire the boys with his own vision of the 
greatness of the new nation destined to grow up 
here and which it would be theirs to live in. In 
September, 1769, the two brothers entered the 
freshman class at Yale College, Nathan then being 
in his fifteenth year. 




II 



HALE IN COLLEGE — FOUR YEARS AT YALE 
(1769-1773) 



■ 


■ 


^M 


~^s 


HJ 


H 



N his new sphere, in the student 
world now opening to him, it 
becomes possible to form some 
sort of personal acquaintance 
with Hale. Here through the 
record as well as incidentally 
through his fellows and in- 
structors who long cherished 
their recollections of him the main outlines of his 
course can be followed. If we have little from his 
own pen, if we must forego an insight into his 
inner self as he might have reflected it in letters or 
in entries of a private journal — material which sel- 
dom existed and is rarely found — we can still see 
and appreciate him in his surroundings. The inti- 
mate and whole-souled friendships of college days 
are proverbial, and Hale seems to have had his 
full share of them. It is from this source largely 



22 



IN COLLEGE 23 

that we are assured of his manUness, scholarship, 
attractive personality and the general high tone of 
his nature. Where he is recalled as " a much loved 
classmate," there is a sweetness and a value in the 
memory peculiarly its own; or if there are refer- 
ences, though brief, to his cultivated mind and gen- 
erous impulses, or to his unassuming air and quiet 
dignity, or to his popularity as seen in the honors 
voted him, and again to the promise of his success 
in life, we have a recognized basis from which to 
estimate his worth. He should be understood by 
the student of to-day. Every college generation 
produces young men who impress themselves upon 
their associates somewhat as Hale did in his time. 

In 1769, Yale College at New Haven was but a 
town academy compared with the spreading univer- 
sity now celebrating two hundred years of growth. 
But relatively its usefulness and influence were hardly 
less marked. Its president was Rev. Dr. Naph- 
tali Daggett. Among its different instructors were 
several exceptionally able men, such as John 
Trumbull, John Davenport, Joseph Howe, Nathan 
Strong and Timothy Dwight. In one year or an- 
other Hale was probably taught by all. The last 
three — recent graduates who had returned to be 
tutors at the college — gave promise of eminence 
which Strong and Dwight fulfilled, Dwight becom-' 
ing a distinguished president of Yale and Strong a 
shining light of the Hartford pulpit. Howe, also a 



24 NATHAN HALE 

preacher, died early, just as his talents were attract- 
ing attention. Hale notes his death in his army 
diary. Strong was Hale's relative and fellow- 
townsman referred to in the previous chapter, with 
both of whom Dwight was also distantly connected 
as being a descendant of Elder Strong of Northamp- 
ton. Our young student thus found himself, cer- 
tainly in his junior and senior years, among personal 
friends, and in these friends he was equally fortunate 
in finding the best of teachers and advisers. How 
highly and fondly Dwight came to regard him will 
appear in another connection. 

During Hale's course there were about one hun- 
dred students in the four classes. His own, the 
class of 1773, was the largest, with its thirty-six 
graduates. At that date three buildings stood on 
the college grounds. One of them remains — the 
dormitory. South Middle, originally called "Con- 
necticut Hall," in which Hale must have roomed 
during one or more of his years. Supervision of 
the little community was of the parental order. 
There was a monastic as well as Puritan touch in 
the moral and religious obligations enjoined — the 
living of blameless lives, the reading of the Scrip- 
tures as the fountain of light and truth, and the at- 
tendance on public and private devotions. Offenses 
or delinquencies were punishable largely by fines — a 
survival of the practice in the medieval guilds and 
corporations — the fines ranging from a penny for 



IN COLLEGE 25 

absence from morning or evening prayers to eight 
shillings or suspension or expulsion for repeated and 
glaring misdemeanors. Those were the days, too, 
when the most formal outward respect must be 
shown to the college authorities. All the students 
were to stand uncovered whenever the President 
passed along the walks, and all were to bow when 
he went in or out of the chapel. There were regu- 
lar study hours then, when the campus was to be 
quiet, when singing, loud talking and "all scream- 
ings and hollowings" around the buildings were 
finable. The students boarded in "Commons," 
managed by steward and butler, and their luxuries 
included pipes and tobacco, cider and strong beer. 
The freshmen were a much abused class, their 
insignificance even being officially recognized. 
Among other indignities, they were obliged, within 
limits, to be waiters and messengers to upper-class 
men. We have a description of campus customs 
and college costume in the reminiscences of Oliver 
Wolcott, Hamilton's successor as Secretary of the 
Treasury, in the very summer of 1773 when Hale 
was about to graduate. 

"I went up to college in the evening," he writes, "to 
observe the scene of my future exploits with emotions of 
awe and reverence. Men in black robes, white wigs and 
high cocked hats, young men dressed in camblet gowns, 
passed us in small groups. The men in robes and wigs I 
was told were professors; the young men in gowns were 



26 NATHAN HALE 

students. There were young men in black silk gowns, 
some with bands and others without. These were either 
tutors in the college or resident graduates to whom the 
title of 'Sir' was accorded. When we entered the col- 
lege yard a new scene was presented. There was a class 
who wore no gowns and who walked but never ran or 
jumped in the yard. They appeared much in awe or 
looked surlily after they passed by the young men habited 
in gowns and staves. Some of the young gownsmen 
treated those who wore neither hats or gowns in the yard 
with harshness and what I thought indignity. I give an 
instance: 'Nevill, go to my room, middle story of old 
college, No. — , and take from it a pitcher, fill it from the 
pump, place it in my room and stay there till my return.' 
The domineering young men I was told were scholars or 
students of the sophomore class, and those without hats 
and gowns and who walked in the yard were freshmen, 
who out of the hours of study were waiters or servants 
to the authority, the president, professors, tutors and under- 
graduates." {JVolcott Memorial^ p. 225.) 

But behind this exterior could be found that free- 
dom, companionship and communistic enthusiasm 
which have always made the American student's life 
one of the happiest of his experiences. Those 
generally robust sons of colonial parents were not 
likely to spend four years in tame existence. The 
numerous offenses mentioned in the penal laws of 
the college show how far their spirits had to be 
curbed. They had their recreations, sports and oc- 
casional wild pranks; and if we read aright, they 
resented impositions, one instance occurring in 



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IN COLLEGE 27 

Hale's day, when John Brown, of the class of 1771, 
afterwards a gallant officer who fell in the Revolu- 
tion, was one of the leaders in a revolt against the 
quality, it would seem, of college " commons," 
and left with others until grievances were redressed. 
To Hale and his brother college life must have 
been a constant enjoyment, and in view of their 
training it could have been no task for them to 
conform to the regulations. By the fortunate pres- 
ervation of three letters from their father — plain, 
homely missives, with the usual distorted spelling, 
but very uncommon as records and valuable to us 
just now for their tenderness, injunctions and hard 
fact — we get a few glimpses of the boys in their 
new relations. Whether as freshmen or sopho- 
mores, they were addressed as "Dear Children," and 
reminded of their duties. They had written home 
on December 7, 1769, two months after entrance, 
that they were comfortably settled, and on the 26th 
their parent replies : " I hope you will carefully 
mind your studies that your time be not lost and 
that you will mind all the orders of Colledge with 
care." Above all, they were not to forget their de- 
votions or chapel prayers. A year later he wrote 
in the same vein, and added: "Shun all vice, es- 
pecially card-playing." The common view of this 
diversion was still in harmony with the spirit of the 
college rules of 1745, under which play at cards, 
dice or on a wager was subject to fine, to be fol- 



28 NATHAN HALE 

lowed on the third offense by expulsion. As to 
a student's expenses, then as now, they were always 
pending, and the bills of the country boys were 
probably settled irregularly. Exchange and barter 
were much out of vogue in the larger towns, and 
the farmer could not pay his sons' board with the 
wheat in his barn. In their freshman year Richard 
Hale tells his children that he will send them some 
money soon, perhaps by "Mr. Sherman" — Roger 
Sherman, no doubt — when he returns from his cir- 
cuit, and he inquires whether it would do to let 
their account run until he could go to town himself 
in May and clear it up. In the following year he 
hopes to forward what cash they need "when 
S""- Strong comes to Coventry" — this clearly being 
their graduate cousin, "Sir" Nathan Strong, who 
appears to have been continuing his studies at the 
college before he became tutor. At vacation times 
their own horses would be driven down for them, 
or they could hire some in New Haven. The ma- 
jority of Connecticut boys wore suits cut from home- 
spun, and the Hales had theirs from Coventry. 
Toward the end of their sophomore year one of 
them was called home to be fitted to a suit, if he 
could obtain leave and if they hoped to have new 
clothes for the coming Commencement. " I so- 
pose," writes Mr. Hale — to be spared the protest 
with which the suggestion would be received by 
the modern sophomore — "I sopose that one mea- 



IN COLLEGE 29 

sure will do for both of you." During their third 
year an epidemic of measles broke out in the col- 
lege, both boys being taken down. Tallmadge states 
that in his case he could do little studying during 
parts of his junior and senior years. 

Hale made the most of the curriculum, and at 
the end stood among the best scholars and most pop- 
ular men of his class. During the first two years 
there was some grinding study through "the three 
learned tongues" — Greek, Latin and Hebrew — 
with logic, rhetoric and geometry interspersed; 
while in the last two, natural philosophy, astronomy, 
mathematics, metaphysics and ethics completed the 
sum of their accomplishments. On Fridays the stu- 
dents, about six at a time, were to declaim before 
their fellows in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and "in 
no other language without special leave from the 
President." Saturday forenoons were devoted to the 
study of divinity. Fines followed the neglect of 
all exercises. In the class-rooms Enoch Hale was 
known as Hole primus , and Nathan, Hale secundus, 
a practice long continued in New England Latin 
grammar schools as well. That some students 
found the routine irksome is not surprising, and 
when Roger Alden afterwards wrote to Hale from 
his school-room that he dreaded its hours as much 
as ever he did " the morning prayer bell or Saturday 
noon recitations," his complaint was only a distant 
precursor of changes that were to end in the elimi- 



30 NATHAN HALE 

nation of both. The prayer bell still rings, but not 
at half-past four a.m. in the summer time and half- 
past five in the winter — the startling hours when 
Alden and Hale heard it. 

As a literary diversion the students established 
debating societies. Two, well known to all Yale 
graduates, survived — "Linonia," founded in 1753, 
and "The Brothers in Unity," in 1768. After more 
than a century's existence, both have been dissolved. 
Former alumni, distinguished at the bar, in Con- 
gress or in the pulpit, owed something of their 
rhetorical ' training to these societies. The Hales 
belonged to Linonia and took an active interest in 
it, Nathan especially. In his junior year, 1771, 
he became its secretary or "scribe" and his book 
of well-kept minutes is still preserved in the uni- 
versity library. That the members improved and 
enjoyed themselves the entries fully bear out. Their 
exercises on different evenings were debates, narra- 
tions, addresses, dialogues and a system of mutual 
questions and answers. To better their conversation 
and literary style, they could criticize each other's 
grammar and choice of words. On one occasion 
they debated the question whether it was right to 
enslave the African. Nathan's name frequently ap- 
pears among the speakers, as on December 23, 1771, 
when another member had succeeded him as scribe, 
" The meeting was opened with a very entertaining 
narration by Hale 2d;" or again, the meeting of 



IN COLLEGE 31 

August 5, 1772, "closed with a speech deUvered by 
Hale 2d." The dramatic art seems to have been 
in high favor with these embryo ministers, warriors 
and statesmen, and we find them at intervals for- 
getting Edwards on the Will, or Van Mastricht on 
Regeneration, or President Clap on the Foundation 
of Moral Virtue, to entertain themselves and their 
friends with the play of the "Conscious Lovers," or 
the "West Indian," or the "Toy Shop," or the 
"Beaux' Stratagem." In the two latter Hale took a 
part with eclat, while in the caste of the first were 
included no less a trio than "Sirs" D wight, Daven- 
port and Williams. The "West Indian" was an- 
nounced as a new comedy to be played on the occa- 
sion of Linonia's twentieth anniversary, April 3, 1773, 
at the house of Mr. Thomas Atwater. The enter- 
tainment was a pronounced success. "Both the 
scenery and action," says the secretary, "were on 
all hands allowed to be superior to anything of the 
kind heretofore exhibited on the like occasion. The 
whole received peculiar beauty from the officers ap- 
pearing dressed in regimentals and the actresses in 
full and elegant suits of lady's apparel. The last 
scene was no sooner closed than the company testi- 
fied their satisfaction by the clapping of hands. . . . 
An epilogue made expressly on the occasion and de- 
livered by Hale 2d was received with approbation." 
There was also a musical dialogue sung by two 
members "in the characters of Damon and Clora." 



32 NATHAN HALE 

That Hale was held in deserved esteem by his 
fellows is further evidenced by the fact that he was 
the first chancellor, or president, of Linonia from 
his class. In later years, and doubtless it was so 
then, this was regarded as among the highest of 
college honors in the gift of the students. Portions 
of one of his addresses before the society are given 
in the Appendix.^ As to his literary tastes, it would 
be enough to know that they were recognized and 
appreciated by Timothy Dwight, who, with other 
young instructors, was just at that time moving to 
raise the standard of culture at the college, espe- 
cially in the direction of composition, oratory and 
criticism. Dwight's letter to Hale of February 20, 
1776, is doubly interesting as indicating one of the 
methods by which an author of that day announced 
his efforts to the public and as hinting at his friend's 
intellectual bent and qualities of heart. The former 
was preparing to publish his epic poem, the " Con- 
quest of Canaan," and he sought the good offices of 
Hale in introducing it to his acquaintances. "To 
a person of Mr. Hale's character," he wrote him, 
"motives of friendship apart, one's fondness for the 
liberal arts would be a sufficient excuse for calling 
his attention to the work ; " and he adds, " I esteem 
myself happy in reflecting that the person who may 
confer this obligation is a gentleman, of whose po- 

lAlso a word in regard to Hale's connection with Linonia' s library 
and a note from Tallmadge. 



IN COLLEGE 33 

liteness and benevolence I have already experienced 
so frequent and so undoubted assurances." 

Commencement day for the class of 1773 fell 
on September 3. It v^^as the annual grand occasion 
both for college and the town, w^hen dignitaries of 
the colony and the lights of its churches, together 
with numerous citizens, assembled in the meeting- 
house on the New Haven green to listen to the 
graduation exercises. An all-day function, it was 
continued as such to quite recent years, though losing 
its varied character. A report of it appears in The 
Connecticut journal and New Haven Post Boy, now 
one of the rarest of colonial newspapers. In the 
forenoon the salutatory address was delivered by 
John Palsgrave Wyllys, of Hartford, who, like Hale, 
early entered into the Revolutionary War and after 
fourteen years of service fell in action with the In- 
dians on the western frontier. A " syllogistic dis- 
putation" followed, and then came a forensic debate 
by Messrs. Beckwith, Fairchild, Flint and Mead on 
the question, "Whether a large metropolis would be 
of public advantage to the Colony." Messrs. Alden, 
Keyes and Marvin — all three to become Revolution- 
ary officers — rendered a dialogue in English on the 
three learned professions, and Sir Williams delivered 
an English oration on Prejudice. In the afternoon 
Sir Davenport resumed the exercises with an Eng- 
lish oration on the state of the private schools in 
Connecticut. Another syllogistic dispute — this one 



34 NATHAN HALE 

in Latin — followed, and the Commencement closed 
with what was evidently the treat of the day — a 
second forensic debate by Messrs. Hale, Robinson, 
Sampson and Tallmadge on the then pertinent ques- 
tion, " Whether the Education of Daughters be not, 
without any just reason, more neglected than that 
of Sons." Quite possibly, as some writers state. 
Hale took the side of the daughters, with whom we 
know him to have been a general favorite. 

As our young graduate now goes out into the 
world after a successful course in college, carrying 
with him all the honors and good wishes he could 
desire, he is much less the stranger to us that he 
would have been without this experience. We shall 
come to know him better during the next three 
years. Friends and classmates will think too highly 
of him not to keep up a correspondence, and it is 
their letters that throw the side-lights we need on 
his personality. Not long after his death some one 
of his contemporaries in New Haven, an acquain- 
tance and probably college companion, remembered 
him with a eulogy in which, with due allowance for 
the poetic feeling and license in the case, we doubt- 
less have a more or less faithful picture or impres- 
sion of Hale. He is handed down to us by his 
Alma Mater, we may say, as a most attractive and 
superior fellow, a son of whose acquirements within 
her walls she was proud, and for whom an enviable 
future might be predicted. 



IN COLLEGE 35 

" Erect and tall, his well-proportioned frame, 
Vigorous and active, as electric flame ; 
His manly limbs had symmetry and grace, 
And innate goodness marked his beauteous face ; 
His fancy lively, and his genius great. 
His solid judgment shone in grave debate ; 
For erudition far beyond his years; 
At Yale distinguished above all his peers ; 
Speak, ye who knew him while a pupil there. 
His numerous virtues to the world declare ; 
His blameless carriage and his modest air, 
Above the vain parade and idle show 
Which mark the coxcomb and the empty beau ; 
Removed from envy, malice, pride, and strife, 
He walked through goodness as he walked through life; 
A kinder brother nature never knew, 
A child more duteous or a friend more true."^ 

Recollections bear out this description. Those who 
knew him, and others who gathered details and tra- 
ditions as early as 1835, tell us that he was a notice- 
ably fine-looking youth, nearly six feet in height, 
broad-chested, ruddy in complexion, with expres- 
sive features, a musical voice, and a presence that 
was at once natural and commanding. Stories are 
told of his athletic skill. A happy manner, gener- 
ous disposition and social aptitude graced the stronger 
side of his character. He was evidently mature for 
his years — maturer than his companions — and 

1 The poem was first published in the American Historical 
Magazine in 1836. 



36 NATHAN HALE 

though not yet twenty, was about to enter active 
Hfe with much of a man's equipment. 

Among his New Haven friends Hale counted Dr. 
^neas Munson, long a well-known physician of the 
place. In 1836 his son, also Dr. i^neas Munson, 
still remembered by old residents, wrote to the maga- 
zine referred to above : " Nathan Hale I was ac- 
quainted with from his frequent visits at my father's 
house, while an academical student. His own re- 
marks and the remarks of my father left at that 
period an indelible impression on my mind." On 
one of these occasions, as Hale left the house, the 
elder Munson observed : " That man is a diamond 
of the first water, calculated to excel in any station 
he assumes. He is a gentleman and a scholar, and 
last, though not least of his qualifications, a Chris- 
tian." And by way of appeal to the editor the 
younger doctor adds, before any memorials to their 
friend were erected : " Cannot you rouse the dor- 
mant energies of an ungrateful republic, in the case 
of Captain Hale, to mark the spot where so much 
virtue and patriotism moulder with his native dust?" 




Statue of Hale, Wadsworth Athenaeum, 
Hartford 



Ill 

HALE AS SCHOOLMASTER— AT EAST 
HADDAM AND NEW LONDON 




PON graduation, or in the early 
fall of 1773, Nathan visited his 
uncle, Samuel Hale, at Ports- 
mouth, New Hampshire. This 
was his father's brother — al- 
ready mentioned — a graduate 
of Harvard College, who was 
the well-known head of the 
leading school in that colony, and was addressed as 
"Major" on account of his rank and services at 
Cape Breton and the siege of Louisburg. What 
Hale had to say of this trip and his own affairs ap- 
pears in the interesting letter he afterwards wrote to 
Portsmouth, and from which we shall have occasion 
to quote. Returning to Connecticut, he followed 
his uncle's lines and became schoolmaster. This 
was the usual step before entering upon a call- 
ing. Professional departments and labyrinthian post- 
37 



38 NATHAN HALE 

graduate courses, in which the "Sirs" could con- 
tinue their studies to an advanced point, were yet 
to be evolved as the crown of the higher education. 
About the most dignified position to which the 
teacher of that day could aspire was a tutorship at 
the college, and there places were not permanent. 
Few could look beyond the pedagogue's desk either 
for temporary or lifelong occupation. What Hale's 
future plans were beyond his schoolmaster's round 
is not indicated. He must have thought of the 
ministry and may have intended to enter it. Two 
works on the subject which he once owned have 
recently come to light. One bears the title : 
"Theodorus — a dialogue concerning the Art of 
Preaching. By Mr. David Fordyce, London, 1755.'' 
On its fly-leaf is written, Nathan Hale s Book, I J 68 
— as far as known, the earliest of his autographs. 
This was the year before he entered college, and 
possibly the book was a gift to him from his pastor, 
or his parents, or one of the Reverend Strongs 
among his connections, who wished to incline him 
to the pulpit in his impressionable years. The other, 
which he had in college, is entitled : " A Treatise 
on Regeneration. By Peter Van Mastricht, D.D., 
Professor of Divinity in the Universities of Franc- 
fort, Duisburgh, and Utrecht. Extracted from his 
System of Divinity called Theologia theoretica- 
practica," etc. Its preface states that Cotton 
Mather, in his directions for a candidate for the 



SCHOOLMASTER 



39 



ministry, thought there was "no human composure 
equal to it." Here again on the fly-leaf is the simi- 
lar autograph, Nathan Hale s Booky IJJI ; but if he 
was in the habit of poring over its contents, there is 
nothing to suggest it in the perfectly smooth pages 
and unthumbed edges of the volume.^ It may have 
been a reference book which the students were ex- 
pected to consult in connection with their Saturday 
noon divinity lectures, and which its possessor had put 
away for future use, perhaps in company with other 
early seventeenth-century authorities on the same 
subject. It is clear that a year later — September, 
1774 — Hale had not yet decided upon his future 
course, for at that date he was seeking his uncle's 
advice regarding his acceptance of a permanent po- 
sition as teacher. 

For the time being there were schools enough 
for the newly fledged graduates. In that same year 
— 1773 — Governor Jonathan Trumbull of Connecti- 
cut, in reply to inquiries from one of the Secretaries 
of State, London, reported that the colony taxes 
amounted annually to about six thousand pounds, 
"somewhat more than one third part" of which — 
a good proportion — was raised by the several towns 
for the support of their schools. Nathan Hale found 
a situation at East Haddam, on the Connecticut 

1 This edition was published at New Haven — " Printed and sold by- 
Thomas and Samuel Green, in the Old-Council-Chamber." Hale's 
copy was secured by Mr. W. F, Havemeyer, of New York, from the 
famous George Brinley collection. 



40 NATHAN HALE 

River, sixteen miles from its mouth ; his brother 
Enoch, one near Windsor, east of the river; Tall- 
madge, one at Wethersfield, w^here he succeeded 
David Humphreys, a graduate, and subsequently aide 
to Washington ; Marvin, one at Norwich ; Alden, 
at New Haven ; Robinson, at New Windsor. The 
schools they taught were of three descriptions. 
First, the common schools supported by the towns, 
generally through the machinery of the ecclesias- 
tical societies. These were the district or parish 
schools, which children of all ages could attend. 
Second, the grammar or higher schools, which a 
few of the larger towns were required to maintain. 
Third, the private schools or academies, then slowly 
increasing in number. One of these was opened by 
Daniel Humphrey at New Haven, in 1776, for the 
purpose of teaching writing, arithmetic and gram- 
mar. Emphasis was to be laid on the English clas- 
sics, and the pupils trained "to write their mother 
tongue with eloquence." 

The school Hale taught was probably one of the 
first description — a parish or district school of East 
Haddam, with the school-house near the ferry or 
"landing," as it is called to-day. Possibly it was a 
private school. The house has recently passed into 
the hands of a patriotic society and been moved to 
another site on the river bank. East Haddam was 
also known by the contracted Indian name of Moodus, 
which now distinguishes the flourishing village above 



SCHOOLMASTER 41 

it. Hale calls it " East Haddam (alias Modos)." His 
term here was a comparatively short one of four or 
five months, dating from about October, 1773, to 
the middle of March, 1 774. Of this, his first ex- 
perience, we know almost nothing. The school 
could have differed little from the one in which he 
was taught himself at Coventry, nor did the work 
vary greatly from what we find him doing in his 
next school at New London, save that he probably 
taught less Latin, if any at all. His pupils were of 
the same grades as elsewhere, from primary children 
to young persons of his own age, and all learning 
the usual English branches. Within the school- 
room it was not an uncommon arrangement to have 
the scholars seated on long benches fronting flat 
desks fastened in the walls. School-books were 
rarities then, Dilworth's or some other author's 
spelling-lessons and the Psalter being about the only 
ones in general use in the country districts. Black- 
boards and globes were almost unknown. Noah 
Webster tells us that before the Revolution all 
writing exercises and operations in arithmetic were 
worked out on paper. The teacher wrote the 
"copies" and read off the sums. Frequently the 
entire school studied aloud; and thus, with other 
primitive methods and simple exercises, the early 
required education was instilled. More than one of 
Hale's boys is doubtless pictured to the life in Trum- 
bull's "Progress of Dulness" : 



42 NATHAN HALE 

" There 's not a lad in town so bright, 
He '11 cypher bravely, write and read, 
And say his catechism and creed, 
And scorns to hesitate or falter 
In Primer, Spelling-book or Psalter." 

We may be confident, however, that in his hu- 
morous description of the average district pedagogue 
Trumbull could not have had in mind so bright a 
youth as Hale, v^hom he had known and may have 
taught at Yale : 

" He tries, with ease and unconcern. 
To teach what ne'er himself could learn. 
Gives law and punishment alone. 
Judge, jury, bailiff, all in one, 
Holds all good learning must depend 
Upon the rod's extremest end." 

Although East Haddam was a town with agricul- 
tural and shipping interests. Hale seems to have 
found it an isolated place, and this may account in 
part for his brief stay there. Missing old friends, he 
was, nevertheless, certain to make new ones ; and he 
could say no more of his agreeable situation at New 
London afterwards than that it was "somewhat 
preferable" to that at East Haddam. Mail facilities 
were irregular, and his acquaintances appear to have 
heard from him but seldom. His classmate Robin- 
son runs him pleasantly on his disappearance thus : 



SCHOOLMASTER 43 

"I am at a loss to determine whether you are yet 
in this land of the living, or removed to some far 
distant and to us unknown region; but this much 
I am certain of, that if you departed this life at 
Modos, you stood but a narrow chance for gaining 
a better." Stuart gives the recollection of one old 
lady who went to Hale's school in this river town. 
"Everybody loved him," she said; "he was so 
sprightly, intelligent and kind, and withal so hand- 
some." 

Hale had not been teaching many weeks at East 
Haddam before he sought or was invited to a more 
promising post. "I love my employment," he was 
to write a year later; and if a strong liking for it 
had already developed, with an intuitive sense that 
he was born to the work, a field with larger pros- 
pects would be his ambition. Early in December 
we find him corresponding with Mr. Timothy 
Green, of New London, one of the proprietors of 
the new "Union School" just then established at 
that place, respecting his engagement as master for 
the spring term of the following year. Hearing 
of this opportunity. Hale evidently interested his old 
pastor. Rev. Mr. Huntington, in the matter, and se- 
cui:ed from him the necessary letters of introduction 
and recommendation, on the receipt of which Mr. 
Green wrote to him, December 21: "I have shewed 
Mr. Huntington's Letter and sample of your writ- 
ing enclosed in it to several of the Proprietors of 



44 NATHAN HALE 

the School in this Town, who have desired me to 
inform you that there is a probability of their agree- 
ing with you to keep the School ; and for that rea- 
son desire that you would not engage yourself else- 
where till you hear further from them." Another 
letter from Mr. Green appears in the Appendix. 

The "sample" of handwriting referred to was 
the sine qua non and passport to position required of 
every young schoolmaster of the period, and in the 
nature of the case was quite superior to their or- 
dinary chirography. The few letters we have from 
Hale compare very favorably in appearance with 
those of his correspondents, and that he could set a 
"copy" which his pupils would be proud to equal 
may be seen in his call for a school meeting February 
22, 1775, and especially in the signature of his letter 
to his classmate Mead — amusingly affected, no doubt 
— which still stands at the bottom of the page with 
the precise regularity and shading of an engraved 
hand. This accomplishment, so far as it went, 
helped to tell in Hale's favor, though he was not 
to have the school immediately. The proprietors, 
needing a teacher at once, employed Phineas Tracy, 
of Norwich, for three months, at the same time 
holding out encouragement to our East Haddam 
candidate. On February 4 Mr. Green again re- 
quested him to wait, this time for "one week more," 
before accepting any other place; and on the loth 
formally notified him of his engagement for one 



Hale's Letter with the Schoolmaster Autograph 

(page 44) 



Collection of Major Godfrey A. S. Wieners 



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SCHOOLMASTER 45 

quarter, at the rate of two hundred and twenty dol- 
lars per annum. 

The Union School at New London, of which 
Hale now took charge — " about the middle of 
March," when Tracy's term closed — may have been 
modeled upon the older and quite famous academy 
at Lebanon, Connecticut, which Master Nathan 
Tisdale, a graduate of Harvard College, had been 
long and successfully conducting. The proprietors 
of the latter included twelve well-to-do residents of 
the town, with Governor Trumbull as one of their 
number, who wished to give their own children, 
and such others as might join them, the advantages 
of a select and superior schooling. In their agree- 
ment we read that "A Latin scholar is to be com- 
puted at 35s., old tenor, for each quarter, and a 
reading scholar at 30s. for each quarter — each one 
to pay according to the number of children that he 
sends, and the learning they are improved upon, 
whether the learned tongues, reading and history, 
or reading and English only." Master Tisdale's 
school was liberally patronized, but in one respect 
it would not have appealed to the modern youth. 
The artist Trumbull, who attended it, tells us that 
it offered no vacations, "in the long idleness and 
dissipations of which the labors of preceding months 
might be half forgotten." 

Here was an opportunity for a young school- 
master to set a new enterprise on its feet, and Hale 



46 NATHAN HALE 

succeeded. In their petition for incorporation, the 
proprietors of the academy state that they " have at 
great cost erected a school-house for the advance- 
ment of learning," and hired and paid teachers, and 
they v^ere anxious to get the right man for master 
and retain him. Not six months had elapsed before 
they were offering Hale increased wages and a per- 
manent position. The school was incorporated in 
October, 1 774, and one of the most interesting me- 
morials presented in these pages is the facsimile of 
a call issued through Hale for one of the early 
meetings of its proprietors, a complete list of whose 
names we have here for the first time. They were 
twenty-four in all, and represented the wealth and 
intelligence of New London — the Saltonstalls, Win- 
throps, Laws, Mumfords, Coits, Shaws, Richards, 
Greens, and others of influence. Their children 
formed the body of the school, and Hale found his 
time fully occupied in their instruction. We know 
something about it from his own pen. On Sep- 
tember 24, 1774, he wrote to his uncle at Ports- 
mouth: "My own employment is at present that 
you spent your days in. I have a school of thirty- 
two boys, about half Latin, the rest English. The 
salary allowed me is 70^^ per annum. In addition 
to this I have kept during the summer, a morning 
school, between the hours of five and seven, of 
about twenty young ladies; for which I have re- 
ceived 6s. a scholar by the quarter. The people with 



SCHOOLMASTER 47 

whom I live are free and generous — many of them 
gentlemen of sense and merit. They are desirous 
that I would continue and settle in the school; and 
propose a considerable increase in wages. I am 
much at a loss whether to accept their proposals. 
Your advice in the matter coming from an Uncle, 
and from a man who has spent his life in the busi- 
ness, would, I think, be the best I could possibly 
receive." To his classmate Mead he gives a few of 
the same facts, and to Dr. Munson, at New Haven, 
he wrote two months later : " I am happily situated 
here. I love my employment; find many friends 
among strangers ; have time for scientific study, and 
seem to fill the place assigned me with satisfaction." 
What Hale meant by scientific study was general 
reading, a sort of culture course apart from theology 
or law, and in pursuing it he seems to have had a 
small library of his own to draw upon. Such 
works as Pope's "Iliad" and the "History of the 
Seven Years' War," in five volumes, were to be sent 
him, his brother Enoch writes, from "among the 
books" at his home. 

Hale's occupation was clearly congenial to him, 
as it seems not to have been to his classmate Alden, 
who disliked being confined to particular hours, or 
have his morning reading interrupted by the discov- 
ery that it was "just fifty-nine minutes after eight 
o'clock." The philosophical Robinson found that 
teaching deprived him of the pleasure of many 



48 NATHAN HALE 

agreeable rides he had counted on taking about the 
country, and, as he writes to Hale, prevented him 
from enjoying "the company of yourself with some 
other special friends." Marvin wrote later that with 
him "teaching, scolding, flogging, is the continual 
round"; but the war had then opened and he longed 
to be in the field. 

Of the impression Hale made as a teacher some 
recollections remain. One or two of his old pupils 
were living when Stuart wrote. The venerable Colonel 
Samuel Green, of Hartford, could recall his tact and 
amiability, his wonderful control over boys without 
severity of manner, and his universal popularity. 
Mrs. Elizabeth Poole, who lived in the same family 
with Hale in New London, testified in 1837 to his 
abilities, successful methods, fine appearance and 
manners, and superior mold. A letter from one of 
his young boys, Robert Latimer, written to Hale 
while he was in camp, has been preserved. " I think 
myself," he writes, "under the greatest obligations to 
you for your care and kindness to me. . . . Though 
I have been so happy as to be favoured with your in- 
structions, you can't. Sir, expect a finished letter from 
one who has as yet practised but very little this way, 
especially with persons of your nice discernment;" 
and he adds, with the unconscious humor of his years, 
"I am sure, was my Mammy willing, I think I 
should prefer being with you to all the pleasures 
which the company of my relations can afford me." 



SCHOOLMASTER 49 

Mr. J. S. Babcock, who published a pamphlet on 
Hale in 1844, may not be too fulsome in his pen 
picture of the young schoolmaster where he says: 
"There are persons yet living, who well recollect 
his mild and winning mode of instruction, gaining 
at once the confidence and attachment of both pa- 
rents and pupils; his modest yet manly deportment, 
his singularly frank and sincere manner, free from 
shadow of deception or disguise; his happy art of 
imparting right views and feelings to his inferiors ; 
the power and charm of his conversation, which 
made him the favorite of both sexes — of the old 
and the young, in every domestic circle; withal, 
his remarkably expressive features, the very mirror 
of his heart, brightening up at every new emotion 
with a glow and an earnestness which none who 
had once seen him could ever forget." 

Hale reengaged to remain where he was until 
the middle of July, 1775. His subsequent course 
would be determined by circumstances. He might 
continue with the Union Academy and succeed to 
Tisdale's or his own uncle's reputation as a notable 
New England schoolmaster ; or, like Nathan Strong, 
Timothy Dwight and his classmate William Rob- 
inson, he might be invited to become a tutor at 
Yale and under its influences conclude to enter the 
ministry. In such case we might have known him 
thereafter as one of Connecticut's leading parish 
pastors or divines. His brother Enoch, who was 



so NATHAN HALE 

greatly attached to him, entered the profession and 
settled at Westhampton, Massachusetts, where he 
maintained "an energetic and useful" charge for 
more than fifty-seven years. Nathan's last school- 
house still stands. Like the one at East Haddam, 
it has recently been restored, removed to a new site 
and placed in the care of a patriotic society, to be 
used as a library and depository of colonial and 
Revolutionary relics. 

At New London, Hale made many good friends. 
The families of the school proprietors alone would 
form a large and homelike circle. In Gilbert Sal- 
tonstall, a graduate of Harvard, son of Colonel Gur- 
don Saltonstall, part of whose correspondence is 
included in these pages, he seems to have found a 
kindred spirit. The town was a port of entry, and 
among its residents were ship-builders, ship-masters, 
importers and whalers, some of them rough and 
ready men, full of adventure, and not a few of whom, 
including four or five of the proprietors referred to, 
were to do good service during the Revolution as 
owners and captains of privateers. Here Hale met 
a new element whose acquaintance was to prove im- 
portant to him when the war broke out, and which 
he must have enjoyed in itself. Scholar as he was 
and refined in his tastes, he loved companionship 
and could mingle heartily with the world as he 
found it. Those who were to become his subor- 
dinate officers and soldiers recognized in him, as 



SCHOOLMASTER 51 

their letters show, a sympathetic heart as responsive 
to their own rugged, honest natures as they were 
appreciative of his talents and open character. His 
experience in this town was valuable to him in more 
ways than one. It broadened his range of observa- 
tion and matured capacities in which others would 
be called upon and were willing to confide. 

With Hale's college and later days it is usual to 
associate a bit of romance which seems to be gather- 
ing into a chapter of courtship and engagement. To 
the few circumstances, however, as they were under- 
stood fifty years ago and noticed elsewhere in these 
pages,^ there is little to add. The handsome and 
aflfable youth no doubt made an impression in the 
circle of his young lady friends and was equally sus- 
ceptible to their attractions. We have an intima- 
tion of his tastes in one case from a line his class- 
mate Robinson wrote to him while he was teaching 
at East Haddam. " My own school," he says, " is 
not large ; my neighbors are kind, and (summatim) 
my distance from a house on your side the river 
which contains an object worthy the esteem of every 
one, and, as I conclude, has yours in an especial 
manner, is not great." Tallmadge appears to have 
heard of this from Robinson, and at a later date 
wrote to his dear Hale charging him with being, 
in his own words, " head and heels in love." These 
intimate classmates, like the universal college chum, 

1 See notes at end of the Appendix. 



52 NATHAN HALE 

could not let the opportunity pass of making the 
most of rumor or their suspicions, and they may 
have been in league to draw Hale out. Whether 
he satisfied their curiosity, or whether there was any 
foundation for it at all, does not appear. It is cer- 
tain that the young lady in question was not the one 
to whom Hale was engaged at the time of his 
death. The latter is best known as Alice, or Alicia, 
Adams, whom domestic changes introduced into his 
father's family while he was in college. They be- 
came betrothed apparently while he was in the ser- 
vice, and it is pleasant to know that she also was a 
person " worthy the esteem of every one." She sur- 
vived as the widow of Mr. William Lawrence, of 
Hartford, to the ripe age of eighty-eight, and is still 
remembered by persons living as a sweet, benign, 
intellectual woman — a character that is stamped in 
the lines of her portrait which has recently been 
added to the Athenaeum collection in that city. 




Hale's Letter to School Proprietors 



Collection of Mr. W. F. Havemeyer 






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IV 



THE LEXINGTON ALARM— HALE 
JOINS THE ARMY 




HILE Hale was teaching school 
the war opened. The nine- 
teenth of April, 1775, had the 
effect of a surprise. The phase 
of affairs had been regarded as 
critical, men felt that a struggle 
was upon them, but the actual 
hostilities, the firing of the first 
gun, stirred them all with a new and profound sen- 
sation. It was so in our Civil War. While the 
conflict with the mother-country had been openly 
predicted and anticipated, the sudden mustering of 
the farmers, the volleys along the roads and from 
behind the walls, the slaughter of the red-coats, the 
fall of neighbors and the grief of families intensified 
their mingled forebodings and enthusiasm. No- 
thing had come so near to these people since the 
days when King Philip or the Pequots had threat- 

53 



54 NATHAN HALE 

ened the homes of their grandfathers. The pitch 
of their emotion and patriotism is represented hj 
this outburst in a letter of the day: "Oh my dear 
New England, hearest thou the alarm of war — the 
call of Heaven is to arms, to arms!" 

Connecticut as a near neighbor turned out to the 
assistance of Massachusetts and in a few days had 
four thousand men on the roads marching towards 
Boston. They dropped into their militia organiza- 
tions or, forming impromptu companies, pushed on, 
in many cases without waiting for orders. In its 
records of the Revolutionary War, published by the 
State, the names of these volunteers, with the days 
of their service, are classified by localities and to- 
gether present the appearance of an honor-roll of 
the emergency. In the Coventry list may be seen 
the names of John and Joseph Hale, two of 
Nathan's brothers. 

The young schoolmaster watched the tendencies 
of the times with eager interest. In the second 
letter that we have from his pen, dated September 
8, 1774, he writes that no liberty-pole had yet 
been erected in New London, "but the people 
seem much more spirited than they were before 
the alarm." This was an alarm caused within a 
few days by the report that the British ships were 
firing upon Boston and troops preparing to march 
upon the towns. Several thousand armed men in 
Massachusetts and Connecticut immediately headed 



JOINS THE ARMY 55 

for the threatened points. The reports proved false, 
but the colonists realized through this demonstra- 
tion that the right spirit would prevail when re- 
ports proved true. Hale adds: "Parson Peters, of 
Hebron, I hear, has had a second visit paid him by 
the Sons of liberty in Windham. His treatment 
and the concessions he made I have not yet heard." 
Hebron adjoined Coventry and the parson was the 
Rev. Samuel Peters, one of the few clergymen in 
the colony who threw their influence against the 
rising sentiment of the country. Finding the lib- 
erty men too much in earnest to give them occasion 
for a third visit, he quickly left for England. 

From this date the movement grew rapidly. In 
October the lately assembled first Continental Con- 
gress took decisive action in favor of commercial 
non-intercourse with Great Britain as long as the 
tax measures were in force. Its stand was ap- 
plauded and toasted by the patriotic element. A 
wider interchange of views and freer expression of 
them followed. New London was one of the few 
Connecticut towns that could boast the luxury of a 
newspaper, and its weekly Gazette, like the others 
elsewhere, served as a pulse of opinion through the 
items it circulated. If Hale read it carefully, as no 
doubt he did, he saw that his friends and neighbors 
in Coventry held a legal town meeting on September 
13, — Phineas Strong, moderator, — at which they 
expressed alarm at the gloomy aspect, but at the 



56 NATHAN HALE 

same time gratefully acknowledged "the favorable 
omens of Providence in that happy unity, propitious 
plenty, sympathetic charity, noble fortitude and 
manly resistance to despotism, universal throughout 
America." He saw that at the recent Commence- 
ment at his college there was an English dialogue 
presented on "The Right of America, and the un- 
constitutional measures of the British Parliament." 
Now and then there came some bugle blast which 
strengthened the nerves, as when "Cassius" wrote 
to the printer on February 24, 1775: 

" The question which for the last ten years has been agi- 
tated between Great Britain and the American Colonies 
is now shifted from the principle of right to that of power. 
. . . To this crisis, O Americans, our affairs are wrought 
up that the alternative, the serious alternative, is this — 
either submit and take the yoke upon you or prepare, and 
that instantly, to resist in the same style in which you 
have hitherto professed to reason and to act. Long and 
laboured speeches and harangues, when the enemy are in 
sight, carry with them strong implication of cowardice. 
. . . Therefore, as it has been for some time sounded 
as our alarm-bell that we must unite or die — our motto 
being 'United we stand, divided we fall' — so in one 
word let this be added, Resist and be free or submit and 
be slaves. Need men be urged to arm when the enemy 
is at the door ? " 

Immediately beneath this appears the report of 
a meeting in Fairfax County, Virginia, in favor of 



JOINS THE ARMY ^'j 

organization of companies and drilling for service, 
with the heading, " Colonel George Washington in 
the Chair." A month later the Gazette did not fail 
to publish Warren's oration on the anniversary of 
the Boston massacre, v^ith its many impassioned sen- 
tences, and also one of Chatham's friendly speeches. 
Independence was at that date something of a pro- 
hibited sentiment so far as its public expression was 
concerned, but in private it was avowed, if not 
urged, in certain quarters ; and when the New Lon- 
don paper found a pointed reference to it in the 
Boston Post, it seems to have been happy to quote it 
without assuming the responsibility of its appear- 
ance. In effect the writer said that if England con- 
tinued to spurn her colonies, the latter would be 
compelled by the great law of nature to rise in 
their might and, following the example of the 
united provinces of Holland, publish a manifesto to 
the world, showing the necessity of dissolving their 
connection with a nation whose ministers were aim- 
ing at their ruin. With this they must offer free 
trade to all and an asylum to the oppressed through- 
out the world. "This is the dernier resort^' contin- 
ued the writer, " and this, Americans, you can do, 
and this you must do, unless tyranny ceases to invade 
your liberties." Samuel Adams thought so too, and 
he had more than one disciple throughout the col- 
onies. From what we know of Hale he could 
heartily have said "Amen" to the sentiment. 



58 NATHAN HALE 

There was also a poets' corner in the Gazette in 
which the local muse was permitted at intervals 
to fan the flame. "Rule Britannia" was once as 
popular in America as in England, but now an 
American version was attempted : 

" To spread bright freedom's gentle sway, 
Your isle too narrow for its bound, 
We traced wild ocean's trackless way 
And here a safe asylum found. 

Rule Britannia, rule the waves, 
But rule us justly — not like slaves. 

" Let us your sons by freedom warm'd, 

Your own example keep in view, 
'Gainst Tyranny be ever arm'd, 

Tho' we our Tyrant find — in you. 
Rule Britannia, rule the waves. 
But never make your children slaves." 

To Hale such atmosphere must have proved a tonic, 
and we are the better prepared to accept the tra- 
ditions which represent him as making a spirited 
speech at a public meeting held in New London on 
the reception of the news from Lexington. "Let 
us march immediately," he is reported to have said, 
"and never lay down our arms until we obtain our 
independence." The last word was cautiously in 
the air, but he may have boldly spoken it as the 
true issue of the war. This was obvious to every 



JOINS THE ARMY 59 

one who had watched events and understood the 
temper of the home administration. There was no 
half-way outcome. War meant complete indepen- 
dence for the colonies, or, in case of defeat, a more 
irritating dependence on Great Britain. 

Whatever Hale may have said at the meeting, it 
is hardly probable, as usually represented, that he 
bade farewell to his school on the following morn- 
ing and marched with Captain Coit's company for 
Boston. Parts of four companies went from New 
London. His name does not appear on the official 
list of any of them, and from the tenor of his letter 
to the proprietors of the school, July 7th follow- 
ing, we gather that he had not been absent from it 
in April. He was under engagement for a year, 
and just before its expiration he requested as a 
special favor that they would release him two weeks 
in advance. Nothing, he says, could have persuaded 
him to ask for it but the fact that he had received 
a commission in the army and that closing a fort- 
night earlier would probably not subject them to 
inconvenience. Had he marched on the alarm and 
been away as long as Coit's company, the school 
would have been broken up for the term. He was 
well aware that if the war had then opened in 
earnest, the systematic mustering of troops would be 
necessary and that he could enter for permanent 
service in ample time a few weeks later. 

Connecticut made her first regular call for volun- 



6o NATHAN HALE 

teers soon after the uprising of the 19th and 
organized six regiments, one from each county, to 
serve for seven months. As these troops were de- 
spatched into fields outside of the State, some to par- 
ticipate in the siege of Boston, others to invade 
Canada, the Assembly at an extra session in July 
organized two more regiments for the special defense 
of the colony, to be known as the "Seventh" and 
"Eighth" and to serve until about the ist of De- 
cember. Long terms of service, winter quarters — 
anything suggestive of a regular army — would have 
been intolerable to the colonists at that date, and 
in consequence the country during the first two 
years suffered from lack of discipline and cohesion 
in its defensive force. It was not until 1777 that a 
Continental army was enlisted to serve for "three 
years or during the war." On the other hand, the 
short terms of the earlier years were filled with a 
promptness that gave to the cause the needed mo- 
mentum and appearance of energy. 

On the ist of July the Connecticut Assembly 
appointed, and on the 6th the Governor commis- 
sioned, the officers of the new "Seventh" regiment. 
Hale's name was on the list. He appeared as first 
lieutenant of the third, or major's, company. The 
appointment doubtless came about in the usual way. 
The Assembly, through committees, made out the 
list from applications and recommendations received 
from the delegates or leading men of the towns. 



JOINS THE ARMY 6i 

Expressing his wish to enter the service, Hale could 
receive ample indorsement from friends in New- 
London. It is quite possible that the major, Jona- 
than Latimer, who came from that place and whose 
son Robert was one of Hale's pupils, applied to 
have him appointed his lieutenant. The first lieu- 
tenants of the three field officers' companies were 
practically captains, as they had full charge of the 
men. The regiment was commanded by Colonel 
Charles Webb, of Stamford, and being intended for 
coast defense, it was recruited mainly from Green- 
wich, Stamford, Norwalk, Milford, New Haven, 
Branford, Saybrook, Lyme, New London, Groton, 
and Stonington on the Sound. It contained, as 
Hale himself says, many skippers and sailors. The 
lieutenant-colonel's first lieutenant was William 
Hull, of Derby, one of Hale's college acquain- 
tances whose friendship was to be strengthened in 
their camp associations. 

As he left his school to begin recruiting. Hale 
wrote to the proprietors his appreciative letter of 
July 7th. "Good reasons," he assures them, take 
him into the army. "School keeping," he adds, 
"is a business of which I was always fond, but since 
my residence in this town, everything has conspired 
to render it more agreeable. I have thought much 
of never quitting it but with life, but at present 
there seems an opportunity of more extended public 
service. The kindness expressed to me by the 



62 NATHAN HALE 

people of the place, but especially the proprietors 
of the school, will always be very gratefully re- 
membered." So the school bell gave way to the 
drum, and with commission, blanks and necessary 
funds in hand, Hale proceeded to fill up his com- 
pany. It may have been at this interval, when he 
had occasion to ride around the country, that he 
called on old friends in New Haven. It was at 
Dr. Munson's, as we are told, that, while speaking 
of the new field he was about to enter, he ex- 
claimed with a youth's enthusiasm, "Dulce et de- 
corum est pro patria mori ! " 

Hale appears to have recruited men in and 
around New London, while his lieutenant and 
ensign. Belcher and Hilliard, went to work at 
Stonington. In this connection we have a brief 
but rare letter preserved, in which Belcher writes 
to Hale that by the 27th of July he had enrolled 
twenty-two men, whom he expected to increase to 
thirty, and inquires "what progress you have made 
in the enlisting way." The companies were all 
soon filled and took post at different points. Several 
were stationed at New Haven under the colonel, 
while the major and three companies went on with 
the fortifications at New London. The daily rou- 
tine was drill, guard and picket duty along the 
shore. Once, in August, the enemy's ships fired 
into Stonington and the major and his men — Hale 
with them, no doubt — hurried over to defend the 



JOINS THE ARMY 63 

place. The alarm subsided and they were soon 
ordered to another field. 

Washington had not been in command of the 
gathering provincial army around Boston more than 
a month before he called for reinforcements. On 
September 8th, he made a demand on Governor Trum- 
bull for the two new Connecticut regiments and 
about the 20th the companies were on the march. 

It is here that the preserved portions of Hale's 
army diary begin. Brief, abbreviated, hurriedly 
written and intended, probably, only for personal 
reference, it is still a valuable record — the only ex- 
isting record, indeed, which gives the movements 
of his regiment. For biographical purposes its 
value lies in the lively interest it shows him to have 
taken in his new duties as an officer and in the 
progress of the war. From it we learn that from 
New London his part of the regiment marched to 
Providence and beyond through the Massachusetts 
towns of Rehoboth, Attleborough, Wrentham, Wal- 
pole, Dedham and Roxbury to Cambridge, head- 
quarters of the American force besieging the British 
in Boston. On arrival the Seventh was assigned to 
General Sullivan's brigade at Winter Hill, on the 
extreme left of the semicircular line of investment, 
not far from Medford. The other Connecticut re- 
giments were stationed on the right, at Roxbury. 

Five months had now passed since Lexington 
and Concord, and three since the battle of Bunker 



64 NATHAN HALE 

Hill. These opening successes had greatly elated 
the country and seemed to foreshadow the final 
result. The gathering, around Boston, of the farm- 
ers and citizens in their own clothes, and many of 
them with their own arms, indicated the character 
and extent of the first uprising. It was a new ex- 
perience — not yet, and never to become, a camp 
of soldiers so much as an extended muster of the 
townsmen. These people were still appealing, in 
1775, to their king to protect them against the legis- 
lation of their Parliament, and they raised no com- 
mon flag of disloyalty. They floated their provincial 
or special regimental colors. Our schoolmaster of 
the Seventh Connecticut marched under a blue ban- 
ner. Next year, with their protests and attitude 
unheeded, they will run the white stripes of colo- 
nial integrity through the broad red field of the 
British standard, and at a later date replace the 
Union Jack with a cluster of stars. 




Hale's Powder-horn and Leaf from Army Diary 



Connecticut Historical Society 



' a^^r^^ :^f%.,fy -t^:^^^' 



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IN CAMP NEAR BOSTON- 
THE ENEMY 



■ BESIEGING 




ERE at Winter Hill, two miles 
on the direct road from the 
British at Charlestown Neck 
and Bunker Hill, Hale passed 
his first four months with 
Washington's army. Apart 
from the gratification of being 
in his country's service, he 
found camp life more or less agreeable. He seems 
at one time or another to have visited nearly every 
part of the American lines, examined the forts and 
familiarized himself with the country about. The 
doings of the enemy, who at points were in plain 
sight, would of course be noted. " Considerable 
firing upon Roxbury side in the forenoon, and some 
P. M. No damage done as we hear " — is his first 
entry the morning after arrival in quarters. Some 
days later he rides several miles around to the right 

6s 



66 NATHAN HALE 

or* Dorchester end of the line to have a look at 
British Boston from that side. Now and again he 
commands the picket-guard on Ploughed Hill, in 
advance of Winter Hill, and hears the regulars at 
work with their pickaxes. " One of our centries," 
he writes, " heard their grand rounds give the coun- 
tersign which was Hamilton. — Returned to camp at 
sunrise." November 9th there was a general alarm 
sounded on the landing, at Lechmere's Point, of a 
body of red-coats who were out on a cattle raid. 
"Our works were immediately all manned," is 
Hale's account, "and a detachment sent to receive 
them, who were obliged to wade through water 
nearly waist high. While the enemy were landing, 
we gave them a constant cannonade from Prospect 
Hill. Our party, having got on to the Point, 
marched in two columns, one on each side of y^ 
hill, with a view to surround y^ enemy, but upon 
the first appearance of them, they made their boats 
as fast as possible." Opposite, on Bunker Hill, a 
young English officer, Captain Evelyn, was sending 
home similar bits of news. " Remember poor me," 
he wrote to his father in October, " three thousand 
miles off, lodging upon the cold ground, and now 
and then ducking at the whistling of a twenty-four 
pounder, one of which came a few days ago into 
our camp, went through one of our tents and fairly 
took the crown out of one of the King's Own 
Grenadiers' hats. His head was not in it." Not 



CAMP NEAR BOSTON 67 

long after Hale had something of the same sort to 
note : " Went to Cobble Hill. A shell and a shot 
from Bunker Hill. The shell breaking in the air, 
one piece fell and touched a man's hat, but did no 
harm." This was mild warfare, but all new to 
young soldiers in 1775. 

The siege of Boston presented no thrilling or des- 
perate episodes. On the part of the Americans it 
was mainly a blockade of the roads running out of 
the town, with an attempt to crowd the enemy at 
given points. The lack of powder prevented a con- 
tinued and concentrated bombardment of Boston, 
while the British believed their own force to be in- 
sufficient to break up the siege and seemed to dread 
the repetition of such stone-wall fighting as the 
minute-men of April 1 9th had indulged in. As the 
winter drew on, both armies kept more closely to 
their lines and contented themselves with irregular 
cannonading. From the nature of the position, at- 
tack and sortie were seldom attempted. In the 
meantime Captain Hale was perfecting himself in 
a soldier's and officer's duties. He drilled his com- 
pany, looked after clothes, provisions, pay and equip- 
ments and mastered the minute directions for guards 
and pickets. Resolution and activity marked his 
daily routine. "Studied the method of forming a 
regiment for a review, of arraying the companies, 
also of marching round the reviewing officer. A 
man ought never to lose a moment's time. If he put 



68 NATHAN HALE 

off a thing from one minute to the next his reluc- 
tance is but increased." And again: "Complaint of 
the bad condition of the lower picquet by Major 
Cutler. It is of the utmost importance that an 
officer should be anxious to know his duty, but of 
greater that he should carefully perform what he 
does know. The present irregular state of the 
army is owing to a capital neglect in both of these." 
His leisure hours, too, were often pleasantly spent. 
With the freedom and familiarity permitted in the 
provincial forces, where in many cases men and offi- 
cers had been friends and neighbors at home, we 
find him dining twice at General Putnam's, visiting 
Generals Lee, Greene, Spencer and Sullivan and 
sharing in entertainments. On these occasions Hull 
was frequently his companion. They were both 
promoted to be captains, or more properly captains- 
lieutenant, during this fall — Hale on September ist 
— but were not allowed a full captain's pay until 
the reorganization to be noticed. At times Hale 
joined in camp diversions, played football and 
checkers, watched wrestling matches — evening 
prayers, he tells us, being omitted on the occasion 
when Winter Hill was "stumped" by Prospect 
Hill — read what books he could pick up, went to 
hear the several chaplains preach, drank a bottle of 
wine at Brown's, cider at Stone's, wrote letters to 
father, brothers, friends and pupils, and — what is 
significant of his faith and temperament — through- 



CAMP NEAR BOSTON 69 

out his diary never entered a despondent line or 
reflection. It is true that in his polite note of 
October 19th to Betsey Christophers at New Lon- 
don, he implies that camp scenes had lost their 
first fascination for him. As we would expect, 
however, he tells her : " Not that I am discontented 
— so far from it, that in the present situation of 
things I would not accept a furlough were it 
offered me." 

In his Connecticut circles Hale was not forgotten. 
Among his New London acquaintances, Gilbert 
Saltonstall, already referred to, kept him informed 
of all matters of interest, and to Hale's care in pre- 
serving his letters we are indebted for additions of 
some value to local history. Hearing from the 
captain that he was at Winter Hill, Saltonstall re- 
plied: "I see you are stationed in the mouth of 
danger. I look upon your situation as more peril- 
ous than any other in camp." In reply to some- 
thing Hale must have written him about entering 
the service, he says : " I wholly agree with you in 
y^ agreeables of a camp life and should have tryed 
it in some capacity or other before now, could my 
father carry on his business without me. I proposed 
going with Dudley [his brother] who is appointed 
to command a twenty-Gun ship in the Continental 
Navy, but my father is not willing, and I can't per- 
suade myself to leave him in the eve of life against 
his consent." An opportunity offered later. In a 



70 NATHAN HALE 

postscript he adds: "The young girls, B. Coit, S. 
and P. Belden [Hale's pupils] have frequently de- 
sired their Compliments to Master, but I've never 
thought of mentioning it till novv^. You must v^rite 
something in your next by w^ay of P. S. that I may 
shew^ it them." He sends Hale the war nevt^s from 
different points, addresses him as " Esteemed Friend" 
and hopes he will continue writing him from camp. 
His letters in the Appendix only add to the regret 
that Hale's answers, and his replies to others, have 
not been preserved. John Hallam wrote Octo- 
ber 9th: "I received your two letters by Capt. 
Packwood and the post — am extremely glad you 
bore travelling & arrived at the camp so well. . . . 
Mrs. Hallam, Betsey & the rest of the family's 
compliments to you." Young Thomas W. Fosdick 
applied for a position in the army, "under you in 
particular" — a wish that was to be gratified in the 
following year. Among his classmates Elihu Mar- 
vin, at Norwich, took Hale to task for not remem- 
bering him: "Three months at Cambridge and 
not one Hne — Well, I can't help it; if a Captain's 
commission has all this effect, what will happen 
when it is turned into a Colonel's. . . . Polly hears 
of one and another at New London who have let- 
ters from Mr. Hale, but none comes to me, Polly 
says." Roger Alden, at New Haven, also thought 
he was neglected, but explained with a sententious 
touch: "The cares, perplexities and fatigues of your 



CAMP NEAR BOSTON 71 

office are matters sufficient to vindicate your con- 
duct, and the duty which you owe your honor and 
the interest of your country is sufficient to employ 
your whole time and to justify you in dispensing 
with the obligations of your old friends and ac- 
quaintances." In a livelier and more interested 
vein he continued: "I almost envy you your cir- 
cumstances — I want to be in the army very much; 
I feel myself fit to relish the noise of guns, trum- 
pets, blunderbuss and thunder, and was I qualified 
for a berth and of influence sufficient to procure 
one, I would accept it with all my heart. . . . 
After you have thought over all this tell yourself 
that no one loves you more than Roger Alden." 

With the approach of winter the enlistment of a 
new army engrossed the attention of Congress and 
camp. The terms of most of the troops would ex- 
pire in December, and the danger was foreseen that 
during that ' and the following month the invest- 
ment might be seriously weakened. Washington's 
anxiety in the case is expressed in his letters of that 
date. To meet the emergency it was determined 
to recruit new regiments, as far as possible from 
the old ones in camp, to serve through the year 
1776. This was known as the new establishment, 
and Connecticut's quota was to be five battalions. 
Colonel Webb and all his captains, including Hale, 
reentered the service, first for the emergency until 
January ist, and then for the following year. The 



72 NATHAN HALE 

nucleus of their regiment thus remained, and they 
proceeded to fill up its companies. In the new 
army for 1776 it was designated as the " Nineteenth 
Foot in the service of the United Colonies," other- 
wise in the army of the English colonies on the 
continent of North America, and hence the " Con- 
tinental" army. 

Hale refers to this reorganization, and we find 
him cooperating heart and soul in the work. To 
tide over December, the men were urged by officers 
of all grades, including Generals Lee and Sullivan, 
to remain a few weeks longer, and the militia were 
called out to fill the gaps. In a single sentence in 
Hale's diary we may read how earnestly he put the 
case before his own company : " Promised the men 
if they would tarry another month they should have 
my wages for that time" — an offer that might 
spontaneously come from one who was ready to 
give his life at a more serious turn of affairs. Many 
soldiers volunteered to remain, and the siege was 
maintained. One army was disappearing and an- 
other organizing in the face and with the know- 
ledge of the enemy. Hale's term in the old Seventh 
expired December 6th, and on the loth he was 
mustered out; but under the new arrangement he 
continued his duties without interruption. He re- 
enlisted men for his new company who were given 
furloughs for a few weeks, while his lieutenant and 
ensign went back to Connecticut to recruit more. 



CAMP NEAR BOSTON 73 

It took time to accomplish the business in the 
winter season, and it was well into January before 
the second army took shape. From New London 
John Hallam wrote to Hale, December loth, that 
in view of the many demands for men, recruiting 
for his command went on slowly. Captain Dudley 
Saltonstall was beating up seamen for his Conti- 
nental frigate, and a dozen craft were fitting out in 
port which needed sailors. It will be noticed that 
Hale commiserates Betsey Christophers on the social 
outlook for the winter, there would be so few gen- 
tlemen in town. 

During these army changes Washington permit- 
ted officers and men to visit their homes, and Hale 
took his turn with the rest. On the 23d of De- 
cember he left camp for a month's leave, reaching 
his father's house at Coventry on the 26th. Of 
this visit we know little, as a break occurs in his 
diary from the 29th until his return to Winter Hill, 
and we will leave him at the firesides of those he 
loved and whom he was never again to see. It 
is known that he spent part of the time at New Lon- 
don looking after enlistments. Here he missed his 
ensign, George Hurlbut, who had returned to camp 
and who wrote him on the 28th: "I joined our 
Company last Sunday and found them all in good 
spirits. I was very much disappointed in not seeing 
you here. I am now a going to set out for Bunker 
Hill [on picket]. I shan't go with so much pleasure 



74 NATHAN HALE 

as if you was to be with me." On January 4th he is in 
happier mood : " I hope the next time I see you it 
will be in Boston a drinking a glass of wine with 
me. If we can but have a bridge we shall make a 
push to try our brave courage." On January 27th 
Hale was back again in camp with recruits to find 
that his regiment was one of the largest among the 
twenty-six which formed the new force, and that in 
the reorganization it was brigaded with three other 
Connecticut regiments under General Spencer and 
transferred to the right wing at Roxbury. His new 
commission as a full Continental captain, dated Jan- 
uary I, 1776, and signed by John Hancock, is still 
preserved. 

Presently the military situation changed. Find- 
ing themselves locked in at Boston, unable to util- 
ize either their army or their navy effectively, the 
British determined to abandon the contracted base 
for a wider field. They proposed to make New York 
the center of operations in 1776, and with power- 
ful reinforcements control the line of the Hudson 
and thus isolate New England, with its large popu- 
lation and resources, from the other colonies. From 
that vantage-point the rebellion was to be quelled 
north and south. Washington and his officers fath- 
omed the enemy's intentions, and in January Gen- 
eral Lee was despatched to New York City to fore- 
stall Lord Howe and put the place in a state of 
defense. On March 17, 1776, came the first step 



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CAMP NEAR BOSTON 



7S 



in the change of base. The British evacuated Bos- 
ton and sailed away to HaHfax — an event which 
was hailed with the greatest satisfaction through- 
out the country as a significant American triumph. 
Washington immediately began the transfer of the 
main part of his force to the threatened quarter. 




VI 



WITH THE ARMY AT NEW YORK — DEFEAT 
ON LONG ISLAND 




HE Boston army marched to 
New York by brigades follow- 
ing each other at brief inter- 
vals. The first to start was a 
specially organized command 
under General Heath and in- 
cluded Hale's regiment, Webb's 
"Nineteenth." Webb's march- 
ing orders, signed by Horatio Gates, then Washing- 
ton's adjutant-general, have been preserved. Leav- 
ing Roxbury March i8th with five days' cooked 
rations, the troops were to proceed by way of 
Mann's to Providence and thence by way of Green's 
and Burnham's — well-known inns — to Norwich, 
a distance of ninety-three miles, which Heath re- 
ports, the condition of the roads considered, they 
covered "with great expedition." On the 26th 
the troops were at New London and Hale found 

76 



CAMP NEW YORK jj 

himself for the third time among the friends of his 
school-teaching days and in the community from 
which he had volunteered for the field. But there 
was little time for greeting or reminiscence, as the 
local Gazette states that on the following day they 
all "embarked in high spirits on board 15 tran- 
sports and sailed for New York." Leisurely float- 
ing up the Sound, they reached the East River in 
the forenoon of the 30th and, as Heath again tells 
us, disembarked at Turtle Bay, a convenient land- 
ing-place at the foot of present Forty-Fifth Street, 
a little south of Blackwell's Island. 

As Hale stepped lightly ashore with his company 
and casually took in the surroundings, he saw near 
by an old powder-house and beyond it perhaps the 
remains of a former garrison camp, while just above 
stood attractively James Beekman's handsome man- 
sion and cultivated grounds. Little did he dream 
that the shifting events of the next five months and 
a half would force this scene upon his view again 
with a sudden and pitiless reality ! From that man- 
sion he was to receive his death sentence, and not 
far from where he was then standing, with enemies 
instead of friends about him, he was to meet his 
tragic fate. 

From Turtle Bay the troops marched into New 
York City and quartered in barracks and vacant 
houses. In the course of two weeks the other 
brigades arrived. Washington, not trusting to trans- 



78 NATHAN HALE 

ports, rode down the shore road from New London 
and reached the city April i 3th. From this time 
until the battle of Long Island in August the busi- 
ness in hand for the American forces was to fortify 
their new position. The military problem pre- 
sented more complications than at Boston. There 
the object had been to drive the enemy out of a 
city ; here the effort must be made to prevent them 
from occupying one. As New York was open to 
a combined attack at more than one point by the 
British fleet and land forces, the difficulties of the 
defense were greatly increased. To protect the city 
from direct bombardment it became necessary to 
throw one wing of the American army over to the 
Long Island or Brooklyn side of the East River and 
by its partial isolation weaken the entire line. This 
was the defect in Washington's new position, but it 
was felt and wisely held both in Congress and the 
army that the moral effect of the voluntary aban- 
donment of so important a center would work 
more seriously than defeat in attempting to hold 
it. The enemy were to be met at the coast where 
they landed and every inch of soil disputed with 
them. This was the key-note of the campaign of 
1776. 

In following Hale's experiences in this new field, 
we miss the two sources of information and per- 
sonal incident available for 1775. As far as known, 
not more than four entries of his diary for 1776 



CAMP NEW YORK 79 

have been preserved, and most of his correspon- 
dence has disappeared. Of his own letters for this 
year, three exist. In various other records, how- 
ever, his regiment is referred to. On April 2d, 
three days after its arrival. General Heath reviewed 
his brigade " on the green near the Liberty pole." 
The men, we are told, " made a martial appear- 
ance, being well armed, and went through their 
exercise much to the satisfaction of a great con- 
course of the inhabitants of the city." The green 
was the present City Hall Park, then much larger 
in area and generally called "the fields," while the 
liberty-pole, which in earlier years Sons of Liberty 
set up as often as British soldiers cut it down, stood 
close to the spot where Hale's statue now stands. 
In the review he must have marched over the site. 
As summer approached and troops kept coming in, 
they were encamped in tents outside of the city and 
on the Long Island front. Heath's brigade, which 
passed successively under Generals Stirling's and Sul- 
livan's command and later under General McDou- 
gall's, was stationed early in May at about the 
center of the defenses thrown up across the island 
along the line of Grand Street. It extended across 
the Bowery at that point, with Webb's regiment ap- 
parently on the west side of the road. Of the three 
redouts it was to man, one was on a high hill 
known as Bayard's Mount, but which the British 
during their occupation called Bunker Hill. It was 



8o NATHAN HALE 

in its vicinity that Hale would have been found 
during the greater part of this campaign. On July 
9th — quoting once more from Heath's valuable 
memoirs — " At evening roll-call the declaration of 
the Congress, declaring the United Colonies free, 

SOVEREIGN, AND INDEPENDENT STATES, waS pub- 
lished at the head of the respective brigades in 
camp, and received with loud huzzas." The in- 
evitable issue was joined at last, a new nation was 
proclaimed, and no one, we venture to say, gave 
a more responsive cheer than our young captain, 
who felt for the first time that whatever sacrifice 
he might be called upon to make, it could now be 
made in the name of all that the colonies ought to 
fight for. 

For a short time, in April or May, Hale's regi- 
ment was stationed on Long Island where there 
were works to build and Tories to watch. Many of 
the latter were arrested and removed under guard to 
other parts. Hale entertained a true Whig's opin- 
ion of them. "It would grieve every good man," 
he writes to his brother Enoch, May 30th, "to con- 
sider what unnatural monsters we have as it were in 
our bowels. Numbers in this Colony, and likewise 
in the western part of Connecticut, would be glad 
to imbrue their hands in their country's blood.'* 
With more satisfaction he touches on other points, 
June 3d: "It gives pleasure to every friend of his 
country to observe the health which prevails in our 



CAMP NEW YORK 8i 

army. . . . The army is every day improving 
in discipline, and it is hoped will soon be able to 
meet the enemy at any kind of play. My com- 
pany, v^^hich at first was small, is now increased to 
eighty, and there is a sergeant recruiting, who, I 
hope, has got the other ten which completes the 
Company. We are hardly able to judge as to the 
numbers the British army for the summer is to con- 
sist of — undoubtedly sufficient to cause too much 
bloodshed." These are brief sentences, but they 
continue to reflect Hale's unwavering tone. He is 
observing, stout-hearted, confident, ready to meet 
the enemy "at any kind of play." 

Enoch Hale's replies to his "brother Captain," 
as he called him, are not at hand. That he wrote 
to him several times at this period appears from his 
own brief diary. Having entered the ministry, 
Enoch was now beginning to preach, filling pulpits 
temporarily at different places. As a member of a 
patriotic family he was interested in all that was 
going on and added his encouragement to the 
cause. "Go to training, pray with the soldiers," 
is one of his entries. " Preach to the soldiers be- 
fore they march" is another. On June 19th he 
notes that his brother John "has received a letter 
from Nathan, dated 17th at New York; has sent 
one for me by the way of Norwich — not received 
yet." From July 23d to the 26th he was in New 
Haven attending Commencement. He called on 



82 NATHAN HALE 

the President, saw Mr. Dwight, dined with class- 
mate Hillhouse, lodged with classmate Robinson, 
took tea at "Rev. Edwards" and "Rev. Whittle- 
sey's" and obtained the degree of Master of Arts 
for himself and the captain. "Write to brother 
to tell him I have got him his degree." Many 
questions, of course, these good college friends had 
to ask about Nathan and how he fared in the army, 
and probably they heard nothing more of him until 
the distressing news came in two months later. 

To the disappointment of the spirited young of- 
ficers in the American army, no more opportunities 
for distinguishing themselves in minor affairs offered 
here at New York than at the siege of Boston. 
Active campaigning did not open until the end of 
the summer. Preliminary skirmishes, dashes at picket 
posts, bold reconnoitering and surprises were out of 
the question before the battle of Long Island. Hale, 
it will appear, seems to have missed the chances of 
this kind which warfare usually presents. How 
much credit, accordingly, is to be given to accounts 
which make him the leader in a clever exploit early 
in the season, it is difficult to say. It is stated that 
he performed the feat of cutting out a sloop loaded 
with supplies from under the guns of the British 
man-of-war Asia^ then lying in the East River, and 
distributing the clothes and provisions to needy sol- 
diers of the army. That he was capable of such a 
capture will be taken for granted, but most probably 



CAMP NEW YORK 83 

the incident has come down in an exaggerated 
form or has been confused with some other affair.^ 
Many of Hale's company being sailors, they were 
detailed from time to time to man whale-boats pa- 
trolling the harbor and surrounding shores and a 
few with one or two officers are reported as being 
in the privateering service. Beyond this the regi- 
ment was on almost constant duty with the other 
troops on the lines around the city or on Governor's 
Island. 

Presently, on June 28th, the enemy arrived. In 
a few weeks they numbered twenty-five thousand, 
with a powerful fleet to cooperate. Their camps 
were scattered over Staten Island. Washington's 
force was somewhat larger, but, with its many mili- 
tiamen, far less effective. The expectation and sus- 
pense in the American camp were aggravated by 
Lord Howe's leisurely delay in preparing to ad- 
vance. It was not until August 2 2d that he moved. 
The last note we have from Hale was dated two 
days before. To his brother he wrote : " I have 
only time for a hasty letter. Our situation has been 
such this fortnight or more as scarce to admit of 
writing. . . . For about six or eight days the enemy 
have been expected hourly whenever the wind and 
tide in the least favored. We keep a particular look 
out for them this morning. The place and manner 

iSome facts in the case are given in the notes at the end of 
the Appendix. 



84 NATHAN HALE 

of attack time must determine. The event we leave 
to Heaven." 

The first collision with the enemy — the battle 
of Long Island — occurred on August 27th. Lord 
Howe, at Staten Island, had been studying the 
American position for several weeks and rightly 
concluded that its vulnerable point lay in the de- 
tached left wing on the Brooklyn side. A success- 
ful attack there would result in the capture of some 
thousands of Washington's men, or, if unsuccessful, 
the British could march on to the vicinity of Hell 
Gate, and by threatening the American flank and 
rear at Harlem or beyond, compel the surrender of 
New York. Accordingly, with the bulk of his 
army, twenty-two thousand or more effectives, Howe 
crossed the Narrows to Gravesend beach and pre- 
pared to push three columns against the Brooklyn 
outposts and fortified lines. The latter ran through 
the heart of the present city. One column moved 
toward the site of Greenwood Cemetery, another to 
Flatbush and the lower edge of Prospect Park, while 
the third and strongest, under Howe in person, was 
held in position further east. As soon as Washing- 
ton was assured that this was no feint, but a deter- 
mined advance, he hurried troops across to the ex- 
posed flank and engaged the enemy in skirmishes 
on the roads. On the night of the 26th Howe 
marched his third column far out to his right, en- 
circled the American pickets, captured the patrol of 



CAMP NEW YORK 85 

five officers looking out for him, and early on the 
following morning reached a point between the 
American works and the three thousand American 
troops at the outposts on the grounds of the ceme- 
tery and the park. Finding themselves outflanked 
and almost surrounded, these troops made a dash to 
the rear to regain their works, and in the running 
fight that followed and in the stand made here and 
there by separate parties in the woods and fields we 
have the battle of Long Island. Washington lost 
about eleven hundred men that morning, two thirds 
of them prisoners, and on the night of the 29th, 
the position proving untenable, he made his famous 
retreat back to New York. The skill with which 
this was effected and the chagrin of the enemy at 
the loss of their opportunity compensated partially, 
in moral effect, for the disaster of the 27th. 

Hale's regiment did not participate in this battle. 
McDougall's brigade, to which it then belonged, 
was one of the commands which had been sent over 
one or two days before, but it was retained within 
the works to repel an expected assault by the enemy 
after their success in the open. Hale and his com- 
rades, however, must have been able to witness 
much of the fighting, and on the night of the re- 
treat, with the sailors in the companies to distribute 
among the boats, they probably had their hands full. 
We should look for some description of these excit- 
ing events in the captain's diary, but here that al- 



86 NATHAN HALE 

ready broken record stops short. The closing entry, 
dated August 23 d, mentions the skirmishing on 
Long Island, and, so far as known, this is the last 
item we have under his own hand. 

Hale was now twenty-one years old, and com- 
manding a company seventy or eighty strong. It 
has been observed by writers that the Revolution 
was fought out largely by young men, which is 
substantially true of all long wars. Our school- 
master captain was hardly a veteran as yet, but four- 
teen months with the army had made him some- 
thing of a seasoned soldier who understood his duties 
and impressed his superiors. His own company he 
doubtless held well in hand by firm and kind meth- 
ods and the force of his own example. Such a 
spirit would wish for men who could be depended 
upon in action, and we know that already there was 
some fighting material developing in his little com- 
mand. His brave boy-sergeant, Fosdick, mentioned 
in Hale's last letter, could dare to run a fire-raft 
against a British man-of-war, and presently he will 
be fighting in Knowlton's Rangers. His ensign, 
George Hurlbut, subsequently promoted a cavalry 
captain, was to be mortally wounded in saving a 
store-ship in the Hudson, not far above the scene 
of Fosdick's exploit. Washington's orders men- 
tion him and his comrades on the occasion as "enti- 
tled to the most distinguished notice and applause 
from their general." His faithful sergeant, Stephen 



CAMP NEW YORK 87 

Hempstead, to be referred to again, barely survived 
the terrible wounds he received at the defense of 
Fort Ledyard and in the massacre of its garrison. 
What these fine fellows thought of their captain is 
a matter of record. All three were happy in serv- 
ing under him. Hale's new first lieutenant, Charles 
Webb, Jr., the colonel's son, was to fall some 
months later in a hand-to-hand whale-boat en- 
counter in the Sound. 

So, too, as the emergency called for additional 
troops, there came down to camp several more of 
Hale's friends — a number having been with him 
at the Boston siege — filled with the same bright 
hopes for their country, and some of whom were 
to win laurels. His uncle Joseph and cousin Nathan 
Strong, mentioned in previous chapters, appeared as 
chaplains for brief terms, and one or more of his 
brothers and some relatives from Ashford and Can- 
terbury served with the militia. General Gurdon 
Saltonstall and his son Gilbert, Hale's faithful corre- 
spondent, arrived with a New London county bri- 
gade only in time to hear of their friend's cruel 
fate. Gilbert latterly entered the privateer service, 
and was several times wounded in an action with a 
British cruiser which in desperation and casualties 
recalled the sea-fights of Paul Jones. Among col- 
lege mates, Tallmadge, like Hale, now broke away 
from his school desk and took the field as adjutant. 
He was to become a quite famous major of dra- 



88 NATHAN HALE 

goons, and be taken into Washington's confidence 
in the management of important secret services 
during the war. Schoolmasters Alden and Marvin, 
and Mr. Dv^^ight as chaplain, followed in 1777. 
Wyllys, salutatorian at Hale's commencement, was 
also here. When New York fell in September, it 
was his fate to be captured and held a prisoner in 
the city at the time his classmate was executed. 
Still other friends and acquaintances now in camp 
were Isaac Sherman, William Hull and Ezra Selden, 
who, as battalion and company commanders, were 
to rush with Wayne into the enemy's stronghold at 
Stony Point — the most brilliant affair of the war. 
Had Hale lived, the promise of like service and pro- 
motion was before him. Not that he would have 
sought military honors as such, for a professional 
soldier he never could have become; but with his 
talents, aptitude, personal presence and devotion to 
the cause, he could hardly have retired at the end 
with less distinction than his companions. He was 
to be cut down, however, at the threshold, and an 
unexpected and peculiarly precious remembrance 
held in reserve for him. The strong purpose and 
action which have given to the world its martyrs 
and patriots work out their end in their own way 
and their own time. For Hale the occasion was to 
come in the next twenty days. 



Statue of Hale, City Hall Park, New York 



Sons of the Revolution 



lS«a^i|l«^iiK&if'T(i^;i't^- vv':/ii<^ >■;•■ " ,.:. : :,-'i!iAj,.':ifo, 




VII 



HALE IN THE BRITISH LINES 
AND EXECUTION 



CAPTURE 




no period of the war was 
Washington oppressed with 
keener anxieties or a heavier 
responsibihty than during the 
twenty days immediately fol- 
lowing the battle of Long Isl- 
and. As New York was now 
practically at the mercy of the 
enemy — their guns on Brooklyn Heights com- 
manding the city — all the preparations of the sum- 
mer had come to naught, and the hopes of the 
country disappointed. For the moment his army 
was dispirited. To restore confidence, repair losses 
and provide against further defeat required herculean 
exertion. The faithful chief still hoped to maintain 
the same brave front, and cling to every foot of the 
soil he had been called to defend, when a new 
problem was presented in the changed military sit- 

89 



90 NATHAN HALE 

uation. It was seen to be full of danger. Within 
a week, or by September 6th, the British had ex- 
tended their camps on the Long Island side from 
Brooklyn to Hell Gate, a distance of seven miles or 
more, while their fleet threatened the city from be- 
low. Where Washington before had been facing 
south, with Howe on Staten Island, he now found 
himself in effect facing east, with the narrow East 
River alone between him and his antagonist. Safety 
seemed to lie in the instant abandonment of New 
York and all the island below the line of Harlem. 

Loath to retreat until driven by superior force, the 
American generals held a council of war on the 7th, 
and determined to defend their position, both city 
and island. This decision, which has been criti- 
cized as unmilitary and almost inexplicable, was to 
be reversed four days later ; but one effect of it, 
which the council must have anticipated, was to 
delay the enemy in their next advance. The bold- 
ness of this attitude seemed to puzzle even Lord 
Howe. Washington, more than any one, recog- 
nized the risks involved. Against them he also 
balanced the chances in his favor, as they varied 
from day to day and from hour to hour. The im- 
minent danger was twofold. As long as it could 
be observed that the British were not concentrating 
a flotilla of boats for crossing, the American army 
could be held intact. One tide at night, however, 
might bring them up from the bay or from ships 



CAPTURE AND FATE 91 

in the Sound, in which case another Long Island 
surprise might be in store. It was furthermore 
apparent that the red-coats were massing at New- 
town and the Hell Gate end of the opposite shores, 
where they threatened the American flank and rear. 
The flank would be threatened at Harlem by way 
of the present Ward's and Randall's islands. Should 
a large body of troops land there, at about the foot 
of One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, and push 
across towards the Hudson, it would be interposed 
between Washington's main army in New York 
and a smaller force at King's Bridge under General 
Heath. The question would then be whether 
Washington could drive the enemy back with loss 
or suffer more heavily himself in cutting his way 
through to Heath. The rear was exposed to a 
more northerly movement across to the Westchester 
shore and a rapid march upon King's Bridge, by 
which the Americans would be hemmed in on 
Manhattan Island. In either attempt on the part 
of the enemy it was of the first importance to an- 
ticipate them. 

With this critical situation continuing during the 
first two weeks of September, the tension of Wash- 
ington's suspense correspondingly increased. If he 
had been anxious to fathom Howe's plans before 
the latter began the campaign from Staten Island, 
he was infinitely more so now. It was not enough 
to keep a ceaseless watch across the East River. 



92 NATHAN HALE 

Works and camps were here and there in open 
view, but what was going on behind them? Brit- 
ish headquarters, it was ascertained, were at New- 
town, ships were beginning to run by the American 
batteries in the city, others were reported in the 
Sound and reinforcements were arriving. When 
and where was the next blow to fall ? 

What Washington now longed for and sought 
was information — full, accurate and speedy infor-. 
mation that would throw light on Howe's designs. 
Like every other comrnander in history, all through 
the contest he came to depend much on intelli- 
gence gained through the "secret service."^ Au- 
thorities on war make the spy an essential of war, 
especially justifying his utilization by an army de- 
fending a great cause and its own soil. This had 
already been done in the present campaign. As 
early as July 14th General Hugh Mercer reported 
his regret to Washington that he could find no one 
qualified to enter the camp of the British then re- 
cently arrived. On August 21st, however. General 
William Livingston relieved him with the despatch : 
" Very providentially I sent a spy last night on Staten 
Island to obtain intelligence. He has this moment 
returned in safety." So now, on September ist, the 

lOn this point consult article, "The Secret Service of the Revolu- 
tion," in Magazine of American History, February, 1882. It there ap- 
pears how far Major Tallmadge, Hale's classmate, assisted Washington in 
the matter. The latter' s accounts sWow that he expended considerable 
sums of money for such intelligence. 



CAPTURE AND FATE 93 

chief urged Generals Heath and George Clinton to 
establish "a channel of information" through which 
frequent reports from the Long Island side could 
reach him. "Perhaps," he writes, "some might 
be got who are really Tories for a reasonable reward 
to undertake it. Those who are friends would be 
preferable, if they could manage it as well." More 
anxiously and hurriedly he wrote on the 5th: "As 
everything in a manner depends on obtaining in- 
telligence of the enemy's motions, I do most ear- 
nestly entreat you and General Clinton to exert 
yourselves to accomplish this most desirable end. 
Leave no stone unturned, nor do not stick at ex- 
pense to bring this to pass, as I was never more 
uneasy than on account of my want of knowledge 
on this score." 

Other measures against surprise were also pro- 
vided, such as the organization and more general use 
of light scouting parties whose intended service is 
indicated in the letter last quoted. "Keep constant 
lookouts," Washington instructed Heath," with good 
glasses, on some commanding heights that look well 
on to the other shore, and especially into the bays, 
where boats can be concealed, that they may ob- 
serve, more particularly in the evening, if there be 
any uncommon movements. Much will depend 
upon early intelligence, and meeting the enemy 
before they can intrench. I should much approve 
of small harassing parties, stealing, as it were. 



94 NATHAN HALE 

over in the night, as they might keep the enemy 
alarmed, and more than probably bring ofF a pris- 
oner, from whom some valuable intelligence may be 
obtained."^ 

One of these parties figures vitally in our narra- 
tive — the little corps which those familiar with the 
details of this campaign will recognize as " Knowl- 
ton's Rangers." With its organization we come to 
the turning-point in Hale's career. We reach those 
few remaining days when he will break away from 
regimental routine to seek more active duty with 
this body — when he will find himself in closer 
touch with the movements and interests of the army 
at large — when he will know more of the plans 
and wishes of his beloved commander — when he 
will feel the thrill of special responsibility — and 
when, finally, he will not shrink from taking his life 
in his hands and, single-handed, attempt a service 
which he feels the demands of the hour require of 
him. 

Companies of rangers had been effective in the 
French and Indian War. Captains Robert Rogers 
and Israel Putnam had made a name with them. 
They had served as the eyes of the old frontier army, 
and it was just such watchful and tireless men that 
Washington now needed in his own during the re- 
mainder of this campaign. The lack of them was 

1 This interesting letter appears in the Massachusetts Historical Society 
Collections for 1878 — the "Heath Papers," p. 283. 



CAPTURE AND FATE 95 

felt on Long Island when Howe stole his night 
march around the American left. As Putnam had 
become a rebel major-general and Rogers a loyal- 
ist colonel on the other side, the command of the 
proposed corps fell to Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas 
Knowlton, of Ashford, Connecticut, who had gal- 
lantly defended the rail fence at Bunker Hill, and 
in the former war had been a ranger himself. For 
this body about one hundred and fifty men and 
twenty officers were regarded as sufficient for pres- 
ent purposes. They appear to have been divided 
into four companies, and only the best material was 
admitted to their ranks. The selections were made 
largely from the regiments of Knowlton's own State, 
and it is probable that the captains at least were 
men of his own choice. Two were taken from his 
own regiment, and of the other two one was Nathan 
Hale. Whether the latter, hearing of the proposed 
detachment, volunteered his services, or whether he 
was invited on account of his recognized fitness, does 
not appear. We know that he was accepted and 
served. On the September rolls of Webb's regi- 
ment the record is entered that one captain and 
two lieutenants were on duty with Knowlton, 
while among the many evidences of service filed 
away in the Pension Bureau at Washington — the 
diaries, letters, commissions and sometimes touch- 
ing statements of old Revolutionary soldiers, 
whom Congress had long neglected — may be 



96 NATHAN HALE 

found the brief receipts of moneys due to "the 
Company of Rangers commanded late by Captain 
Hale."i 

Organized about September ist, Knowlton's 
command was quickly on duty at exposed points. 
One company, certainly, patrolled the Westchester 
shore, and the others probably the Harlem and 
Hell Gate flank. They were not engaged on the 
15th when Howe finally made his descent on New 
York, for he crossed some miles below, at Kip's 
Bay, at the foot of East Thirty-fourth Street. 
Washington meanwhile had withdrawn the greater 
part of his force from the city to the northern end 
of the island, and suffered nothing more serious 
than a temporary panic and the loss of three or 
four hundred militiamen. On the following day, 
however, September i6th, the entire body of 
Rangers succeeded, by clever scouting, in drawing 
the van of the British some distance out of their 
new encampment on the line of One Hundred and 
Seventh Street, and then, with other troops, distin- 
guished themselves in driving it back again with 
loss. This was the battle of Harlem Heights, 
fought partly on the present site of Columbia Uni- 
versity; and although it proved a costly victory in 
the death of the brave and manly leader of the 

i"The Battle of Harlem Heights, September 16, 1776," p. 194. 
Published for the Columbia University Press, New York, 1897. For 
roster of the Rangers, see p. 189. 



CAPTURE AND FATE 97 

Rangers, it wonderfully cheered the depressed army 
and stirred the young blood of its soldiers to further 
effort. With what courage and spirit and relish 
would not Hale have dashed into this encounter 
after the long months of regulation duty in camp ! 
Here were fire and action that were real and 
brought results — the kind of service he had been 
clearly eager for, and which now under Knowlton 
it seemed that he could render. But Hale was not 
here. Probably of all the Rangers he alone was 
absent from the Harlem field — nevertheless to be 
found somewhere on some kind of duty, we may 
be assured. At the very hour that his comrades 
were developing the position of the enemy and 
fighting hard and grandly to retrieve the loss and 
panic of the previous day, he was far over on the 
shores of Long Island on the point of undertaking 
the hazardous errand with which his name is 
associated. 

As Knowlton, in the capacity of partizan leader, 
received his instructions directly from the Com- 
mander-in-Chief, he came necessarily to enter con- 
fidentially into his anxieties and wishes. There is 
no record to follow here, no unearthed reports of 
interviews and orders, but if Washington had urged 
Mercer and Livingston and Heath and Clinton to 
use every means to obtain information of the en- 
emy, employing spies if they could, he obviously 
urged the same on Knowlton, in whose military 



98 NATHAN HALE 

tact he had great confidence. If it belonged to 
any one it would belong to an officer whose business 
it was to keep in close touch with the opposite 
picket lines, to see what could be done by stealthy 
means. The office of a spy was doubtless as re- 
pugnant to the fearless Ranger as to any soldier in 
the army, but in the present emergency, between 
the ist and loth of September, he could not ignore 
the call upon him and he broached the matter to 
one or more of his captains and subordinates. Pos- 
sibly he was directed to do so by Washington him- 
self. The veil that usually hangs over the transac- 
tions of the secret service is tightly drawn in this 
case, and we are largely left to conjecture as to 
Knowlton's presentation of the subject. Of one 
thing only have we positive information, and that 
is, that among his officers Captain Nathan Hale, 
after conversations with his colonel, became deeply 
impressed with the situation and the unexpected 
duty which seemed to devolve on some one in his 
corps. The question broke full upon him, at first 
perhaps like a shadow, and again like a summons — 
Shall he become a spy ? 

There could have been no climax or dramatic 
incidents, as usually represented, connected with 
Hale's acceptance of this service. Out of keeping 
with his character, inconsistent with military usage, 
and not well authenticated, they may be discarded 
as weakening the otherwise sustained and winning 



CAPTURE AND FATE 99 

naturalness of the story. ^ It is just at this point 
that the young patriot reveals himself and shines in 
his own light. He does not act from impulse. 
Fortunately, we have an expression of his views in 
the case, and know what considerations moved him. 
In so grave a matter he would seek advice, and to 
no one could he open his mind more freely than 
to his college associate and fellow captain, William 
Hull. From the latter we have the substance of 
the interview. "There was no young man," writes 
this officer, "who gave fairer promise of an en- 
lightened and devoted service to his country than 
this my friend and companion in arms. His nat- 
urally fine intellect had been carefully cultivated, 
and his heart was filled with generous emotions; 
but, like the soaring eagle, the patriotic ardour of 
his soul * winged the dart which caused his destruc- 
tion.' After his interview with Colonel Knowlton, 

1 Stuart has generally been followed in his description of a meeting be- 
tween Knowlton and his officers, where, after an appeal in the name of 
Washington for a volunteer to enter the enemy's lines, with no response 
from any one, there presently "came a voice with the painfully thrilling 
yet cheering words — '/ will undertake it!'' That was the voice of Captain 
Nathan Hale. He had come late into the assembly of officers. Scarcely 
yet recovered from a severe illness, his face still pale, without his accus- 
tomed strength of body, yet firm and ardent as ever of soul, he volunteered 
at once, reckless of its danger, and though doubtless appalled, not van- 
quished by its disgrace, to discharge the repudiated trust." Stuart proba- 
bly accepted some tradition to this effect. Hull, however, tells us that 
Hale had the matter under consideration and sought his advice. Sergeant 
Hempstead, the captain's attendant, states that he declined the proposi- 
tion at first on account of recent illness, but accepted on further reflection. 

L.oFC. 



loo NATHAN HALE 

he repaired to my quarters and informed me of 
what had passed. He remarked that he thought he 
owed to his country the accompUshment of an ob- 
ject so important and so much desired by the com- 
mander of her armies, and he knew of no other 
mode of obtaining the information than by assuming 
a disguise and passing into the enemy's camp. He 
asked my candid opinion."^ Hull then replied, as 
he tells us, by laying before Hale the hateful service 
of a spy, and his own unfitness for the role, as being 
too frank and open for deceit and evasion, and warned 
him of the consequences. He predicted, indeed, 
that should he undertake the enterprise, his short, 
bright career would close with an ignominious death. 
In Hale's reply, spoken, says Hull, with warmth 
and decision, we have a fitting prelude to his dying 
words: "I am fully sensible of the consequences of 
discovery and capture in such a situation. But for 
a year I have been attached to the army, and have 
not rendered any material service while receiving 
a compensation for which I make no return. Yet 
I am not influenced by the expectation of promo- 
tion or pecuniary reward ; I wish to be useful, and 

1 The information Washington needed is indicated on pp. 90-93. He 
wanted frequent intelligence on two points — when will the British be ready 
to cross the East River or make any movement, and where will they attack? 

Hull's memoirs, from which the above quotations are taken, were not 
published until 1847 ; but in her history of New England, Hannah Adams 
published a special account of Hale, written by Hull. This was in 1799, 
when the facts were comparatively fresh in his memory. The memoir 
gives further particulars. 



CAPTURE AND FATE loi 

every kind of service, necessary to the public good, 
becomes honorable by being necessary. If the exi- 
gencies of my country demand a peculiar service its 
claims to perform that service are imperious." 

Once more Hull urged him, for love of country 
and of kindred, to abandon the project. Hale paused 
a moment, then affectionately taking his companion 
by the hand, added as he went out : " I will reflect, 
and do nothing but what duty demands." When 
Hull next heard of him it was the shocking word 
that his prediction had proved true. 

That Hale should take so lofty and unusual a view 
of the obligations of the service upon him, when 
others did not, needs no other explanation than one 
finds in his own words and in his training and moral 
fiber. It was his view of duty. There was some- 
thing of what has been called the Puritan inward- 
ness in the process by which he reached his decision. 
In the previous century he would have made a soldier 
after Cromwell's own heart — an Ironside who could 
pray mightily and fight as he prayed. If a service 
was to be performed which the crisis demanded, in 
the performance of it all consequences were to be 
excluded from consideration. In this case the situ- 
ation seemed to the earnest youth to require the 
highest and most unselfish effort. Washington's 
latest order, following the retreat from Long Island, 
called especially upon the officers of all grades "to 
exert themselves and gloriously determine to conquer 



I02 NATHAN HALE 

or die," and Hale's answer came in the resolution 
he now formed. 

This question — the momentous question of his 
life — thus settled, the patriot captain left camp on 
his perilous mission, with the calm and sustaining 
courage, we must believe, which such a decision 
would inspire. The time of his departure can be 
fixed with some degree of accuracy through his 
brother Enoch, who notes in his diary that it was 
"about the second week " of September, or approxi- 
mately the loth or 12th of the month. Guided 
by the recollections of his sergeant, Hempstead, who, 
at Hale's request, accompanied him a certain dis- 
tance as an attendant, we can also trace his steps 
well towards his destination. The safest route lay 
across the Sound and along the roads of Long Island, 
around to the rear of the British army on the East 
River. This was one of the lines of secret com- 
munication effectively utilized by Washington in 
later years, and he may have indicated it for the 
present initial venture.^ With a general order in his 
pocket from the Commander-in-Chief to the cap- 
tains of armed craft to convey him to any point he 
might designate. Hale proceeded through West- 

1 Whether Hale received instructions as to his route and the information 
required directly from Washington or from the latter through Colonel 
Knowlton, is not clear. It was necessary for the Commander-in-Chief to 
give his consent to the enterprise. Hempstead implies that the captain 
twfice visited headquarters on the business, — headquarters then being at 
the Mortier house on the v^^est side, above the line of present Canal Street, 



CAPTURE AND FATE 103 

Chester County into Connecticut, where no oppor- 
tunity of crossing offered until he reached Norwalk.^ 
Had he attempted the start from a point further 
west — from Throg's Neck, City Island, or New 
Rochelle — the risks would have been great, for 
British men-of-war were hovering in the vicinity, 
with their tenders scouring the shores for skiffs and 
boats. As this was one of the objects of Hale's 
errand, to ascertain what movement these ships 
might be trying to blind or directly facilitate, it 
behooved him, above all things, to avoid them at 
this stage of his route. 

At Norwalk, Hale found an armed sloop, in com- 
mand, as Hempstead states, of a Captain Pond, with 
whom he arranged to be set across the Sound at 
Huntington, Long Island, twelve or fifteen miles 
distant. There are grounds for inferring that this 
was Charles Pond, of Milford, Connecticut, one of 
Hale's fellow-captains in the Nineteenth Regiment, 
necessarily well known to him, and whose own 
hardy and daring spirit would lead him to further 
his comrade's enterprise. 

How Captain Pond came to be in the naval ser- 
vice and at Norwalk at this particular moment re- 
vives some incidents in the exciting warfare of the 
Revolutionary privateers of which as yet we know 
but little. In this instance the documents of the 
time help us to the extent that among the vessels 

1 A brief note on the crossing-place is given in the Appendix. 



I04 NATHAN HALE 

which the Provincial Convention of New York had 
fitted out to guard the coast were two armed sloops 
named the Montgomery and the Schuyler, commanded 
respectively by Captains William Rogers and James 
Smith. In May, 1776, Smith resigned his com- 
mission and the Schuyler passed as a Continental 
sloop under the command of Captain Pond, who, 
as one of the skilful sailors in his regiment, was 
probably detached for temporary service at sea. 
During the summer these two small vessels cruised 
from Sandy Hook to.Montauk Point and sent their 
prizes into Rhode Island and Connecticut or stranded 
them in the inlets of the South Shore. On June 
1 9th, Pond reported to Washington the capture, off 
Fire Island, of an English merchantman with a 
valuable cargo, which Washington in turn was 
gratified to report to Congress. With the defeat on 
Long Island, the successful run of these vessels was 
cut short. The enemy's ships — among them the 
Cerberus, Merlin and Syren — became more active 
and drove the American craft into safer waters. The 
Montgomery and the Schuyler, which at times cruised 
in company, slipped by these watch-dogs, and about 
September 3d sailed into New London harbor. A 
few days later one of them certainly, and doubtless 
both, reported at Norwalk. Hale would thus find 
them there on his arrival. The usual ferry to Long 
Island, run by the Raymonds of Norwalk, had been 
interrupted by the presence in that vicinity of the 



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CAPTURE AND FATE 105 

British twelve-gun brig Halifax, commanded by 
Captain Quarme, and in her unpublished log we 
find an entry which seems to be confirmatory of the 
foregoing and may furnish the approximate date of 
Hale's crossing. Cruising off Huntington on the 
17th, Quarme learned that "two rebel privateers" 
had been seen in the neighborhood.^ Suspecting 
that they might be lurking in the inlets of the bay, 
he armed his boats and tenders and sent them in 
search of the craft, but without result. These priva- 
teers could have been none other than the Mont- 
gomery and the Schuyler, still keeping in company, and 
to be reported on the 17th they must have crossed 
on the night of the 15th or i6th. It was from the 
Schuyler, then, — Captain Pond's vessel, — we have 
every reason to believe, that Hale landed on the Hunt- 
ington shore on one of these dates — the days of the 
loss of New York and the battle of Harlem Heights. 
The final preparations, in themselves enough to 
test both nerve and soul, had been made at Nor- 
walk, and Hale was ready. It is from Hempstead 
alone that we have the few details. "Captain 
Hale," he tells us, "had changed his uniform for a 
plain suit of citizen's brown clothes, with a round, 
broad brimmed hat; assuming the character of a 
Dutch schoolmaster, leaving all his other clothes, 

iProm *'A Log of the Proceedings of H,^ Majesty's Armd Brigg 
Halifax. . . . Will"? Quarme, Commander, by Ab° Pulliblank Qf Mas- 
ter & Pilot." — London Record Office. 



io6 NATHAN HALE 

commission, public and private papers with me, and 
also his silver shoe buckles, saying they w^ould not 
comport v^ith his character of schoolmaster, and 
retaining nothing but his college diploma, as an in- 
troduction to his assumed calling. Thus equipped, 
we parted for the last time in life. He went on 
his mission and I returned back again to Norwalk 
with orders to stop there till he should return, or I 
hear from him, as he expected to cross the Sound 
if he succeeded in his object." 

A Dutch schoolmaster with a New England di- 
ploma! The pleasantry may have come from the 
strong and expectant youth, but in any case, Dutch 
or Yankee, if he was to play his part in broad day- 
light the schoolmaster's was his natural role. 

Here on the shores of Huntington Bay, where 
he landed, until the fatal night of his capture Hale 
is completely lost to our view. He had crossed ' 
the danger line into the enemy's territory and we 
cannot follow him further except as the briefest 
allusions appear from British sources. At the point 
where we would wish to keep pace with him the 
curtain falls with an abrupt concealment of what 
must have been a deeply interesting and possibly 
thrilling experience. One thing may be noticed. 
Soon after landing he necessarily learned that New 
York had been captured on the 15th and the 
Americans defeated and crowded back to the 
heights above Harlem. On that date, as stated. 



CAPTURE AND FATE 107 

Lord Howe had made his delayed attack, and by 
nightfall was in possession of the city and two 
thirds of the island. The wearing anxiety as to 
his movements was over, and Hale was too late for 
the immediate information Washington needed. 
The situation had materially changed in a day 
and the question could well force itself upon him 
whether he should not return to camp, where ser- 
vice with his Rangers might prove more impor- 
tant. The circumstances would seem to have en- 
tirely justified this step. But he went on. With 
his sense of duty as controlling as ever, and his 
soldierly pride more immediately touched now that 
he stood on hostile soil, he doubtless felt that if 
another defeat had befallen his comrades, a greater 
anxiety prevailed as to the enemy's next move- 
ments, and that he must continue in his effort for 
their relief. His persistence at this point, where he 
could have returned with honor, again foreshadows 
the heroism with which he will accept his fate. 

Beyond noting certain facts and inferences which 
bear upon the point, there would be little to gain 
in speculating on Hale's course and methods during 
the six or seven days in which he was now to play 
the spy. At Huntington he was still some forty 
miles distant from his objective point, — the main 
British army on New York Island, — and with the 
caution required in making his way, it would take 
him one third or more of the time to reach it. 



io8 NATHAN HALE 

There were also the camps on the Long Island 
side opposite Hell Gate, with the suspicious ships, 
boats and tenders scattered towards Throg's Neck, 
and of these he must learn as much as possible. In 
passing along the roads in the rear of the army 
from Huntington through Hempstead and Jamaica, 
or around by Flushing and Newtown, and on to 
New York City by way of Brooklyn, now Fulton, 
Ferry — whatever route he followed — he should 
have found the moment favorable in one respect. 
With the battle of Long Island and the loss of 
New York regarded as crushing defeats for the 
Americans, the Tories in King's and Queen's coun- 
ties were in high glee in anticipation of the speedy 
end of the rebellion. The old authority was re- 
established. The lukewarm were taking the oath 
of allegiance. Generals Erskine and Delancey were 
already suppressing the Whigs. Loyalists were en- 
listing. There was more going to and fro on the 
highways. A rebel spy would hardly be looked 
for there. If Hale was brought up with a round 
turn to account for himself, he could readily explain 
that he was one of the Connecticut refugees who 
were just then beginning to cross the Sound singly 
or in small parties. Without friends, he could 
claim the king's protection and seek employment 
in New York. On the other hand, at times, some 
untoward circumstance, some strict regulation, some 
ungrounded fear putting him on his guard, he may 



CAPTURE AND FATE 109 

have concealed himself during the day and moved 
anxiously along in the shadows of the night. It 
may also be pointed out that he v^ould be wary as 
to how he showed himself in the city. Much of 
the old population, the poorer element especially, 
unable to leave with the Americans or happy at 
the change of masters, remained. Hale had been 
encamped there five months. There were negroes, 
laborers, loiterers, sharp-eyed boys, market-people, 
innkeepers and others who would recognize and 
might face him at any turn. His striking features 
and manly form could hardly be disguised. Pecu- 
liar dangers as well as opportunities presented them- 
selves.' Who can tell how that critical interval was 
passed? The movements of spies seldom come to 
light, — the case of Andre, so remarkably consecu- 
tive in detail, being a rare exception or more prop- 
erly a case of a different character. 

Of this we seem to be certain — the assurance 
coming from the British themselves — that down to 
the moment of arrest Hale had conducted his des- 
perate and unfamiliar business with courage, skill 
and address. At the time of his capture his obser- 
vations as a spy had been completed. The impor- 
tant fact comes to us from Howe's own headquar- 
ters, that upon examination of the prisoner it was 
found that he had passed through their encamp- 
ments both on Long Island and at New York, and 
had made memoranda of the situation. This was 



no NATHAN HALE 

an adroit and successful piece of work. The main 
body of the enemy, as already indicated, then lay 
across Manhattan Island, along the general line of 
One Hundred and Seventh Street, where they had 
begun to intrench and fortify after the action of the 
1 6th. If the memoranda found on Hale's person 
included drawings or outlines of works, the works 
must have been these they were now busily con- 
structing. There were no others. It was a line of 
five or six redouts, running east and west, three of 
which stood on the high ground at the upper end 
of present Central Park.^ Whether Hale caught 
glimpses of their outline stealthily, or was able to 
examine them as one of many onlookers per- 
mitted to visit the camps, can only be conjectured. 
But if he were actually there, what sensations must 
have moved him at the moment ! From the Cen- 
tral Park site he was but one mile away from, and 
in full view of, the American outposts at Point of 
Rocks, near Eighth Avenue and One Hundred and 
Twenty-seventh Street. To the east of that point 
were the quarters of his own company of Rangers. 
Near by, on the heights to the west, lay the field of 
the Harlem battle, and to it his eyes must have 
longingly turned as for the first time he may have 
learned, from the casual conversations of British sol- 

1 The position of this line and of the British army generally at this date 
maybe seen in the chart opposite p. 50 in the "Battle of Harlem Heights." 
It is indicated on a small scale in the present work on the map showing 
Hale's route into the British camps. 



CAPTURE AND FATE iii 

diers, that there the rebels had fought Hke heroes, 
and that none fell more bravely than their leader 
Knowlton. The associations would crowd upon 
him, and doubly so, for to reach his own army 
across the plain seemed but a step. 

The week passed and the end came. On the 
evening of September 22d the regular daily orders 
from the British commander-in-chief to his army 
contained an unusual announcement — nothing quite 
like it to be repeated during the war — which doubt- 
less afforded the gossip around the camp-fires that 
night, some of the red-coats listening with merely 
passing curiosity, and others indulging in contemp- 
tuous hilarity and satisfaction that the rebels were 
getting their deserts in whatever game they played. 
On the same evening the information was conveyed 
to the American lines, to fall heavily on the ears of 
Hale's friends and companions in arms. With offi- 
cial brevity the paragraph in the order ran: 

"Head 0!f New York Island, Sep": 22^ 1776 
Parole, London 
Count : Great Britain 

A spy from the Enemy (by his own full confession) 
apprehended last night, was this day Executed at 
11 o Clock in front of the Artilery Park " 

Precisely when, where and under what circum- 
stances Hale was captured and executed has been a 
matter of tradition and uncertainty. Until Howe's 



112 NATHAN HALE 

orders came to light a few years since/ concisely 
establishing several of the disputed points, the ac- 
counts as given by Stuart and Lossing were generally 
followed. From the new and final authority we 
know that Hale was "apprehended" on the night 
of September 21st, that he was executed at eleven 
o'clock in the forenoon of the 22d, and that the place 
of his execution was the camp of the British artillery, 
wherever its location may have been at that date. As 
to the place of his capture, on which the order throws 
no light except indirectly, Stuart was the first biog- 
rapher to attempt to fix it definitely, resting his 
theory on recollections and circumstances gathered 
in his day. It was then believed that after success- 
fully completing his observations. Captain Hale re- 
turned to Huntington, as he had told Hempstead 
that he expected to do, where he spent some hours 
in waiting or looking for a boat to convey him back 
to Norwalk. As he approached the shore at one 
point, he suddenly found himself the victim of 
treachery or his own misapprehension, and he was 
seized. The boat that he saw proved to be a barge 
from the Halifax^ or, according to another account, 
from the Cerberus, and its crew, with leveled mus- 
kets, called on him to surrender as he turned to 

1 The late Mr. William Kelby, librarian of the New York Historical 
Society, was the first to discover this important order. As an indefati- 
gable student of local history, he was much interested in Hale's career and 
fate in New York. 



CAPTURE AND FATE 113 

escape. His arrest followed and he was sent by- 
water to be delivered up at Howe's headquarters 
in New York. 

No inherent improbability attaches to the main 
statement in this account, that Hale returned to 
Huntington. Taking two or three days to reach 
New York, two days in the enemy's camp, and two 
or three days on the way back, and the trip was pos- 
sible. One line in the British order, however, seems 
to undermine the supposition. As the prisoner was 
captured on "the night" of the 21st, and was in the 
hands of the provost-marshal some hours before his 
execution, it would have been impossible to bring 
him from Huntington in any interval that might 
be left. In addition, the alleged circumstances of 
his capture are unlikely, vague and inconsistent. 
For one thing, neither the Halifax nor the Cer- 
berus was off Huntington at this date. The 
latter, as its log informs us, was stationed at Block 
Island. The log of the former, in which every in- 
cident appears to be noticed, makes no mention of 
anything so creditable to her crew as the capture 
of a spy. All that Captain Quarme is represented 
to have said about and in praise of Hale must be 
dismissed as purely mythical. 

On the other hand, the contemporary references 
and the probabilities in the case all point to New 
York or its immediate vicinity as the place of Hale's 
capture. Late in the evening of the 2 2d, Captain 



114 NATHAN HALE 

John Montressor, of the British Engineers, now 
serving as aide-de-camp to Lord Howe, appeared 
under flag of truce at the American outposts on 
Harlem Plains. He was bearer of a letter to Wash- 
ington respecting the exchange of prisoners. Among 
those who went down to meet him were Adjutant- 
General Reed, General Putnam, Captain Alexander 
Hamilton and Captain William Hull. To them 
Montressor verbally gave the information that one 
Captain Hale, an American officer, had been exe- 
cuted that morning as a spy. It was startling news, 
and to Hull it came like a shock. What further 
facts the latter obtained will presently appear; but 
the impression was conveyed that Hale was captured 
"within the British lines." A week later the ter- 
rible word reached Hale's family. Crushed by the 
reports and anxious to know all, Enoch Hale rode 
down to camp and gathered what particulars were 
to be had. In his diary he enters the important 
fact, new in this connection, that he received in- 
formation through "aide-de-camp Webb with a 
flag." This must have been Lieutenant-Colonel 
Samuel B. Webb, then one of Washington's staff, 
and the implication is strong that he was the bearer 
of his chief's reply to Howe a few days later, and 
was instructed at the same time to make further 
inquiries into Hale's case. Too brief is Enoch's 
memorandum to satisfy our deep interest right here, 
but still to the point. Webb brought word, he 



CAPTURE AND FATE 115 

writes, that Nathan, "being suspected by his move- 
ments that he wanted to get out of New York, was 
taken up and examined by the general, and, some 
minutes being found with him, orders were imme- 
diately given that he should be hanged. When at 
the gallows, he spoke and told that he was a Captain 
in the Continental army, by name Nathan Hale." 
Enoch took the distressing details home, and subse- 
quently his brother John made this entry in the 
town records of Coventry: "Capt. Nathan Hale, 
the son of Deac" Richard Hale was taken in the 
City of New York by the Britons and Executed as a 
spie some time in the Month of September A.D. 
1776." Sergeant Hempstead, Asher Wright, Hale's 
waiter, and the first letter published giving any par- 
ticulars in the case, February 13, 1777, all state that 
the capture took place in New York. 

How Hale attempted to make his escape, what 
his movements were by which it was suspected, as 
Enoch states, that "he wanted to get out of New 
York," has yet to come to light. Hempstead's un- 
derstanding was that he endeavored to pass the Brit- 
ish pickets on the Harlem front, somewhere along 
the line of One Hundred and Tenth or Twelfth 
streets, from which he could quickly reach the out- 
posts of his own camp. This is entirely probable. 
The great fire in New York which broke out that 
morning was laid to secret rebel incendiaries, and 
he would keep away from the strictly guarded fer- 



ii6 NATHAN HALE 

ries. Finding that concealment was hourly becom- 
ing more difficult, or that a plausible account of 
himself would be immediately and closely investi- 
gated, he may have resolved to make a dash for 
freedom across the lines. Or, to notice a later sup- 
position, he may have succeeded in crossing the 
East River and was arrested on that side. But 
whether challenged at the picket posts or halted by 
the patrols of the provost-marshal, Hale's fate was 
sealed. "Apprehended last night" is all that we 
certainly know, but the reference clearly limits the 
locality to the vicinity of the British army. 

Upon the capture of New York, the British gen- 
erals established their headquarters in the finest 
country-seats to be found in the neighborhood of 
the camps. Lord Howe selected the beautiful resi- 
dence of James Beekman, overlooking the East River 
at Turtle Bay. Its site was at the corner of Fifty- 
first Street and First Avenue. Earl Percy was five 
streets above, on what was then known as the Hurst 
and afterwards the Thomas Buchanan estate. Sir 
Henry Clinton would have been found in a house 
still further up, near Hell Gate Ferry, and Corn- 
wallis quartered apparently in the handsome Apthorpe 
place on the west side. It was to the Beekman 
mansion, or one of its outlying buildings, as be- 
lieved, that Captain Hale was taken on the night of 
the 2 1 St. Reported as a suspicious character, or 
caught in an attempt to escape to the rebels, it was 



CAPTURE AND FATE 117 

a case of sufficient importance to lay before Lord 
Howe himself. A brief examination followed. 
Pointed questions were put, and then the prisoner 
searched for concealed papers. Such were found, 
consisting, according to Hull, of sketches of fortifi- 
cations and military notes, and they convicted him. 
Taken up — examined by the general — minutes found 
upon his person — is the condensed but certain record. 
There was but one conclusion — the prisoner was a 
spy; and for a spy no mercy is conceivable, — the 
only mercy lying in the summary punishment meted 
out. The proofs before him, Howe immediately 
issued an order for Hale's execution. 

Suddenly and relentlessly as this examination and 
sentence came, they were relieved by one bright 
passage whose deeper meaning the British general 
could not have appreciated. Four words in his or- 
der announcing Hale's fate have a precious value 
for this story. In telling his troops that this was a 
spy on "his own full confession," it was doubtless 
to present it not only as a clear but also as an ag- 
gravated case, illustrating the American method of 
warfare, in which spies confessed to their employ- 
ment, and thus directly implicating Washington and 
Congress. But to those who have come to know 
Hale, "his own full confession" carries in it the 
ring of his character and knightly manhood. His 
honor and his patriotism asserted themselves in this 
most trying moment. More than one high-minded 



ii8 NATHAN HALE 

British officer must have felt that it was no mean, 
mercenary fellow who had been hanged that morn- 
ing, but a brave opponent, after all, who could frankly 
acknowledge his purpose and stoutly face the con- 
sequences. Montressor, for one, must have thought 
so. Next to having Hale's dying words, we would 
wish to know how he answered Howe that night, 
when confronted with the evidence of his errand. 
No explanation, no evasion, no base cringing with 
an offer to enlist in his army, no cowardly cry for 
pardon could come from him. That he gave his 
name at once, also his rank in the Continental army, 
and stated his object in entering the British lines, 
we casually know through Hull from Montressor; 
but what more might he not have confessed — his 
love for his Washington, his hopes for the new na- 
tion and his conviction of final success? In this full 
admission it is still the Hale whom we have been 
following that we see — the true, self-poised, un- 
daunted youth, whose ingrained nobility no circum- 
stance or peril could affect. 

As tradition goes, the prisoner was guarded that 
night in the greenhouse of the Beekman gardens. 
Hardly probable, as generally supposed, that for the 
few hours remaining he would be taken to the city 
jail, the present Hall of Records, four miles away. 
Such a prisoner would be remanded to the keeping 
of the provost-marshal of the army, whose quarters 
were near the commanding general's. This pro- 



CAPTURE AND FATE 119 

vost-marshal was William Cunningham, a man 
with whom all the cruelties of the prison-houses in 
New York during the Revolution are associated. 
We need not dwell upon his record. As yet he had 
had less to do with American captives than with 
British offenders. Perhaps it was the terror of his 
name that made Howe's Newtown orders of Sep- 
tember 6th all the more effective: "The Provost 
Martial has a commission to execute upon the spot 
any soldier he finds guilty of marauding." Execu- 
tions may have already become an old story with 
him. 

With the next morning — Sunday, September 
22, 1776 — we have the closing incidents, the 
brief preparations, and the final scene. Hale's last 
hours in the greenhouse could have been spent 
only as a man brought up under the Christian 
influences of the time would spend them. Sleep- 
less they would be, with the great struggle within 
him — every tender association rushing upon his 
memory and welling up in his heart ; then the fer- 
vent prayers, the visions of the opening heaven, the 
resulting deep and calm resignation, and, above all, 
the glorious uplifting thought that he was to fall, 
with so many others before and after him, in a 
cause worth any sacrifice. The inhuman Cunning- 
ham, we are told, refused him the attendance of a 
clergyman or the use of a Bible. As the time ap- 
proached and there was some delay. Captain Mon- 



I20 NATHAN HALE 

tressor requested the provost-marshal to permit the 
prisoner to sit in his tent — on or close to the Beek- 
man grounds it would be^ — until the preparations 
were completed. Hale entered and "bore himself 
with gentle dignity." He asked for writing-ma- 
terials, which Montressor furnished him, and he 
wrote two letters, one to his mother^ and one to a 
brother officer. They never reached their destina- 
tion. "The Provost Martial," says Hull, "in the 
diabolical spirit of cruelty, destroyed the letters of 
the prisoner, and assigned as a reason *that the rebels 
should not know that they had a man in their army 
who could die with so much firmness.' " 

When, four years later, Major Andre was exe- 
cuted in the American lines, a certain military dig- 
nity was observed in the parade of troops, the 
formation of a square, the erection of a gibbet, 
and in the gathering of many spectators. But 
Andre was adjutant-general of the British army 
and his case involved the corruption and treason of 
an Arnold. The occasion was made impressive. 
For Hale, a rebel and self-confessed spy, there was 
no such ceremony. Towards eleven o'clock he 
was marched off by files of the provost-guard to 

1 Necessarily, for he was Howe's aide. " On the morning of the exe- 
cution my station was near the fatal spot," are Montressor' s words as 
reported by Hull. 

2 It so appears in Hull's memoirs. As Hale's own mother was not 
living, possibly this should be ''brother." Enoch or his father would be 
his first thought in his family. 



CAPTURE AND FATE 121 

some convenient tree, no doubt, in front of a neigh- 
boring camp. They would not take him far. The 
long accepted tradition that Hale was executed in 
Colonel Henry Rutgers' orchard, overlooking the 
river at the foot of the present East Broadway, then 
on the outskirts of the city, must give way with 
other traditions before the official order of Septem- 
ber 22d.^ That order informs us unmistakably 
that the execution took place "in front of the Ar- 
tilery Park"; and from the entries of the same 
orderly-book and other authoritative records it is 
possible to fix its site with satisfactory accuracy. 
As might properly be assumed from what has al- 
ready appeared, this park could have been at no 
great distance from the Beekman mansion. The 
references all indicate that it was immediately south 
of it, on the adjoining grounds — the grounds of the 
old Turtle Bay farm, then belonging to the heirs of 
Admiral Sir Peter Warren. The bay itself was a 
deep notch in the rocky shore extending from the 
present Forty-fifth to Forty-eighth Street, on the 
south side of which stood a dock and two govern- 
ment powder-magazines of colonial days. Near 
these buildings would have been found encamped, 
in the summer of 1766, a part of the city's garri- 

1 The site seemed to be established years ago, on the testimony of 
two old men who claimed to have witnessed Hale's execution there. 
Stuart was at a loss in the case, but assumed that' the place must have 
been near the city jail, or somewhere on Chambers Street. 



122 NATHAN HALE 

son consisting of two hundred men of the Royal 
Artillery, with eight field-guns and four heavy siege- 
pieces. Occasionally they drilled on a large plain 
a mile above them, which was probably the site of 
the proposed Hamilton Square of later days, ex- 
tending easterly from the Seventh Regiment Ar- 
mory. At one corner of it, about Sixty-sixth Street 
and Third Avenue, there stood the "Dove Tavern," 
a well-known inn on the main highway. When, 
now ten years later, the British were on these shores 
again, their artillery was parked on the same site at 
Turtle Bay. The corps being very much larger 
than in 1766, a portion of it, as it would seem, 
moved a little later to the field near the tavern. 
From the Beekman house one could look down 
across a lot and running brook to the original 
camp. It may be pertinently noted that on the 
very day of Hale's capture an order respecting the 
issue of provisions to the army directed the artillery 
to receive theirs "at Turtle Bay." As to the "front" 
of the park, or the spot to which the prisoner had 
now been brought, we may locate it approximately 
near the corner of Forty-fifth Street and First 
Avenue.^ 

Here Hale stood pinioned and guarded — here, 
where less than six months before he had landed 

1 Further reference to the place of Hale's capture and execution, also 
to Captains Hull, Montressor and Pond, appears in the notes in the 
Appendix. 



Order on Hale^s Execution 



From Original in New York Historical Society- 



Site of Hale's Execution 



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CAPTURE AND FATE 123 

with his regiment fresh from the Boston success 
and eager for a greater one at New York. For him 
the scene had changed. The same blue bay and 
river, the same rugged banks, more beautiful in 
their verdure, and the same stately mansion were in 
the view ; but all were to fade before the over- 
whelming fact that he was now at the very center 
of the British army and held in its merciless grip. 
In the distance were the enemy's battle-ships and 
transports, the dock was piled with supplies and 
material of war, the field in front was brilliant with 
the equipage of the most powerful arm of the king's 
service. In this respect at least the youth was not 
to die obscurely. It was a striking turn of inci- 
dents, but for his memory a most happy one, that 
brought this condemned American spy to his grave 
under the very shadow of Lord Howe's headquar- 
ters. But for this should we ever have been able 
to be with him in his last moments, to be assured 
once more of the constancy of his devotion and 
hear the noble words of his dying breath? It is sig- 
nificant that the closing details come to us through 
a British staff officer and a witness of the execution. 
Most fortunate, too, that they were repeated by him 
on the same day, under flag of truce, to one of 
Hale's sincerest friends — the friend whose advice 
he sought before undertaking his mission — the 
friend whose memory would retain and cherish such 
an interview through life. With the execution oc- 



124 NATHAN HALE 

curring elsewhere, in another presence, in or near 
the city, perhaps before a gaping or brutal crowd, 
this record we would not be without might never 
have been preserved — nothing beyond the hard- 
ened message that the missing captain had suffered 
as a spy. The locality and surroundings are all- 
important. Not only do they enable us to fill out 
the story in the sunlight of its close, but they seem 
to assure us, also, that no unnecessary indignities at- 
tended the prisoner's death. Whatever the unfeel- 
ing Cunningham may have said or done — we are 
happily spared that knowledge — no insulting throng 
could have gathered to the spot. A few officers 
and artillerymen, some camp-followers, the stolid 
provost-guard, looked on, and the end came with 
its quick, unceremonious, cruel work. 

But above its assumed ignominy the end came 
gloriously. ^Z As for the fated youth, he died as we 
have been expecting him to die, as all true souls 
have died in the loyal performance of duty — calmly, 
bravely, with one fervent wish for the cause he could 
no longer serve. There was no scenic effect. Little 
could Hale have imagined that what he might say 
to his executioner and his enemies around him would 
ever reach the ears of his comrades. From the foot 
of the Beekman slopes it could be and was destined 
to be heard. Not many words would he be allowed 
or would he care to speak, nor were they to be words 
of defiance or execration, or of sounding prediction 



CAPTURE AND PATE 12^ 

that Britain's efforts would fail. No occasion will 
he give the spectators to drown his words with gibes 
and sneering laughter. His heart was elsewhere, 
steadfast and absorbed as ever in the great movement 
in which he and his loved companions were engaged. 
His enemies will hear something unexpected — 
something a few may reflect upon — something My 
Lord Howe's aide will think worth reporting across 
the lines. In the rebel and the spy before them 
did they see the enduring faith and unconquerable 
spirit of America ? Hardly could the face and form 
of thii young scholar, teacher, soldier and now the 
most devoted of patriots, have impressed them as the 
embodiment of a senseless revolt. For us Hale 
stands there as an inspiration — the genius of the new 
land to which he would devote all and more than 
he can give. As the moments passed and few re- 
mained, the grim preparations — the ladder, the 
hangman, the grave at his feet — had no terrors for 
him. This death, with the traditional infamy men 
attached to it, he had already accepted, and he faced 
it heroically. The promptings in his breast were 
strong and irrepressible. He had something to say, 
whoever might hear. Among the faces turned upon 
him was there one with a touch of sympathy in the 
glance? It mattered little. First, as it would ap- 
pear, he freely told them who he was and why he 
was there, and then, with the breath that was left 
him, came the inborn, spontaneous sentiment we 



126 NATHAN HALE 

now carve in bronze and marble — the burning 
thought and emotion that filled his soul and broke 
out in words that move the souls of all who read 
them : 

"I ONLY REGRET THAT I HAVE BUT ONE 
LIFE TO LOSE FOR MY COUNTRY." 



Many years elapsed — half a century or more — 
before this martyr-like sacrifice met with any gen- 
eral recognition. It could not have been other- 
wise. Ofiicial mention of the case at the time was 
out of the question. Hale was engaged on secret 
and delicate business, and the result, whether fa- 
vorable or unfavorable, it was not for the army to 
know. While nothing could be said or done — 
the execution, under military law, being entirely 
justifiable — it would appear that Washington was 
sensibly disturbed by the occurrence. Did he feel 
a certain responsibility in the case ? Whatever may 
have passed between himself, Knowlton and Hale, 
he alone could give final permission and the orders 
enabling the latter to pass beyond the American 
lines. As the situation, however, justified almost 
any sacrifice, Washington would entertain no com- 



CAPTURE AND FATE 127 

punctions on that score. For the moment indig- 
nation prevailed at headquarters, and officers of the 
staff would have enjoyed the capture of some one 
on a similar errand in their own camp to hang in 
return. One of their number. Colonel Tench 
Tilghman, happened to be then engaged in a confi- 
dential correspondence with William Duer, chair- 
man of the New York committee of safety, in re- 
gard to the disposition of certain Tories who had 
been arrested for organizing on New York terri- 
tory. The State authorities being unwilling to go 
to extremes in the matter, one will find in Tilgh- 
man's manuscripts this reply which he sent to Duer, 
October 3, 1776: "I am sorry that your conven- 
tion do not think themselves legally authorized to 
make examples of those Villians they have appre- 
hended; if that is the case, the well-affected will 
be hardly able to keep a watch upon the ill. The 
General is determined, if he can bring some of them in 
his hands under the denomination of Spies, to execute 
them. General Howe hanged a Captain of ours 
belonging to Knowlton's Rangers who went into 
New York to make discoveries. I don't see why 
we should not make retaliation." ^ A few of these 
Tories having been taken to camp, Duer implored 
Tilghman: "In the name of Justice hang two or 
three of the Villians you have apprehended." All 

1 Italics the author's, who had an opportunity of examining these 
manuscripts some years ago. 



128 NATHAN HALE 

were in the mood to visit vengeance somewhere, 
but proofs of guilt were wanting. 

Four years later the slumbering memory of Hale 
was suddenly revived by the capture of Andre. Proofs 
enough then. While Hale's fate could not have 
affected the disposition of Andre's case, it is certain 
that officers of the army placed the two on the same 
footing. Nearly all of Hale's comrades were still 
in the field, and he could not be forgotten. If the 
American captain was a spy, so was this British pris- 
oner, whatever his rank or plea. It was Tallmadge 
who first reminded Andre of his much-loved class- 
mate, as he called him, and his arrest in the British 
lines in 1776. "Do you remember the sequel of 
the story?" he asked. "Yes," said Andre; "he 
was hanged as a spy. But you surely do not con- 
sider his case and mine alike?" "Yes; precisely 
similar," said Tallmadge, when pressed for a reply; 
"and similar will be your fate." From that date 
— 1780 — the names of Hale and Andre have been 
frequently associated by writers on the Revolution, 
and their characters and mission compared and con- 
trasted. It is not as a spy, however, but as a soldier, 
that Hale stands on the records of the Continental 
army. One of the illustrations in these pages is the 
facsimile of a rare paper, the only known return of 
casualties in the Nineteenth Regiment, with the 
entry : Nathan Hale, " Captain, killed, September 
22, 1776." 



CAPTURE AND FATE 129 

Among our earlier scholars and poets, Dwight re- 
membered his lamented student-friend with deep 
feeling and appreciation. Could Hale have heard 
his instructor read from the pages of his " Conquest 
of Canaan" while he was composing it at college? 
The stately epic opens with scenes in the camp of 
the redoubtable Joshua. Before the chieftain lies a 
heathen city, and towards it he sends the faithful 
captain, Zimri, to spy out its defenses. 

"In night's last gloom (so Joshua's will ordained) 
To find what hopes the cautious foe remained, 
Or what new strength, allied, increased their force, 
To Ai's high walls the hero bent his course." 

With him on the enterprise went forth his trusted 
companion, Aram. 

" Aram, his friend. 
With willing footsteps shared the dangerous way; 
In virtue joined, one soul to both was given." 

As they approached the city a lurking enemy 
pierced young Aram to the heart, while Zimri cut 
the assailant down in a quick but unavailing effort 
to protect his comrade. "Fond virtue" failed to 
save. When Dwight heard of Hale's fate, "emo- 
tions of regard," as he states, prompted him to as- 
sociate his memory with the martyr of his own 
creation; and at this point he inserted the passage 
so often quoted: 



130 NATHAN HALE 

"Thus, while fond virtue wished in vain to save, 
Hale, bright and generous, found a hapless grave. 
With genius' living flame his bosom glowed. 
And Science lured him to her sweet abode; 
In Worth's fair path his feet adventured far. 
The pride of Peace, the rising hope of War; 
In duty firm, in danger calm as even — 
To friends unchanging, and sincere to Heaven. 
How short his course, the prize how early won, 
While weeping Friendship mourns her favorite gone." 

With this tribute from one of the worthiest men 
of the time we close these pages. Such testimony 
to Hale's character, aspirations and promise, and the 
testimony of friends and foes alike to the brand of 
his patriotism and the grandeur of his sacrifice, pre- 
sent a life to be remembered. The shortness of its 
years is immaterial — on the contrary, its charm and 
its suggestion. There can be power in youth as 
well as in manhood. Historical names and careers 
commanding our respect and admiration exist in 
profusion — to the honor of human nature be it said. 
But with Hale there is something rarer — he is en- 
deared to us. We are embalming his memory in the 
customary forms, but it also appeals most touch- 
ingly as a personal heirloom. 




Statue of Hale, Capitol Building, Hartford 




■J"^,.r 



APPENDIX 



HALE'S CORRESPONDENCE, ARMY 

DIARY, TRIBUTES, 

MEMORIALS, 

NOTES 



HALE'S LETTERS 

No. I 

HALE TO HIS CLASSMATE THOMAS MEAD 
AT NEW HAVEN 

Sr 

This is the first opportunity I have had of acknowledg- 
ing your favour of last winter. I was, at the receipt of 
your letter, in East Haddam (alias Modos), a place, which 
I at first, for a long time, concluded inaccessible, either 
by friends, acquaintance or letters. Nor was I convinced 
of the contrary untill I re[cei]ved yours, & at the same 
time, two others from Alden and Wyllys. Which made 
me, if possible, value your letter the more. — 

It was equally or more difficult, to convey anything 
from Modos. True, I saw the bearer of yours (Mr. Med- 
cafF) some few days before he set out for New Haven, 
and desired the favour of se[n]ding some letters by him. 
Accordingly I had written letters to you, Alden and 
Wyllys with one or two others; but upon enquiry, I 
found that Mr. MedcafFwas gone too soon for me. Since 
which I have scarce had an opportunity of sending towards 
N. Haven. — 

I want much to receive a letter from you and a full 

133 



134 NATHAN HALE 

history of the transactions of the winter. I have heard 

many flying reports, but know not what to conclude as to 

tile truth of them. Upon the whole I take it for certain, 

that the '^intumviri have been massacred, but in what 

manner I have not been sufficiently informed. From what 

I can collect, I think probable you have had some high 

doings this winter, but expect a more full account of these 

matters in your next.^ 

I am at present in a School in New London. I think 

my situation somewhat preferable to what it was last 

winter. My school is by no means difficult to take care 

of It consists of about 30 scholars, ten of whom are 

Latiners and all but six of the rest are writers. I have a 

very convenient schoolhouse, and the people are kind 

and sociable. — I promise myself some more satisfaction in 

writing and receiving letters from you than I have as yet 

had. I know of no stated communication, but without 

any doubt opportunities will be much more frequent than 

while I was at Modos. — For the greater part of the last 

year, we were good neighbours, and I always thought, 

very good friends. Surely so good on my part, that it 

would be matter of real grief to me, should our friendship 

cease. — The only means for maintaining it is in constant 

writing: in the practice of which I am ready most heartily to 

concur with you ; and do hope ever to remain, as at present. 

Your Friend and 

Constant well-wisher 

New London, May 1^ Nathan Hale. 

^'774- Mr. Mead. 

[From the original MSS. in possession of Major Godtrey A. S. Wieners, 
College PointjLong Island. Published in full. Stuart gives extracts from it.] 

1 This probably refers to incidents at college, perhaps 
connected with his society, Linonia, 



APPENDIX 135 

No. 2 

HALE TO HIS BROTHER ENOCH AT LYME 

[New London, Se]pt. 8'^, 1774. 
Dear Brother, 

I have a word to write and a minute to write it in. I 
received yours of yesterday this morning. Agreable to 
your desire I will endeavour [to] get the cloth and carry 
it over Saturday. I have no news. No liberty-pole is 
erected or erecting here ; but the people seem much more 
spirited than they were before the alarm. Parson Peters 
of Hebron, I hear, has had a second visit paid him by the 
sons of liberty in Win[d]ham. His treatment and the 
concessions he made I have not as yet heard. I have not 
heard from home since I came from there. 

Your loving Brother, 

Nathan Hale. 
Mr. E. Hale, Lyme. 

[From the original MSS. in possession of Rev. Edward Everett Hale, 
Roxbury, Massachusetts. Now first published.] 



No. 3 

HALE TO HIS UNCLE, SAMUEL HALE, AT PORTSMOUTH, 
NEW HAMPSHIRE 

New London, Conn., Sept. 24*, 1774. 
Respected Uncle : 

My visit to Portsmouth last fall served only to increase 
the nearness of your family and make [me] the more desir- 
ous of seeing them again. But this is a happiness which 
at present I have but little prospect of enjoying. The 



136 NATHAN HALE 

most I now hope for is that I may now and then have the 
satisfaction to hear from my Uncle and Cousins by letter. 
I can tell you but little of my father or his family, 
being situated about 30 miles from them. I have not 
visited them for near three months, but have heard from 
them somewhat indirectly within a few days. I under- 
stand they are well. My eldest sister (Elizabeth) was 
married last winter (as you have doubtless heard) to Sam^ 
Rose, son to Doct"^ Rose, and has, as I suppose, a prospect 
of a very comfortable living. As to any further particu- 
lars of my Father or his Family, I can mention nothing. 
My own employment is at present the same that you 
spent your days in. I have a school of 32 boys, about 
half Latin, the rest English. The salary allowed me is 
70^ per annum. In addition to this, I have kept during 
the summer, a morning school, between the hours of five 
and seven, of about 20 young ladies; for which I have 
received 6s. a scholar by the quarter. The people with 
whom I live are free and generous, many of them gentle- 
men of sense and merit. They are desirous that I would 
continue and settle in the school ; and propose a consider- 
able increase of wages. I am much at a loss whether to 
accept their proposals. Your advice in the matter coming 
from an Uncle, and from a man who has spent his life in 
the business, would, I think, be the best I could possibly 
receive. A few lines on this subject, and also to acquaint 
me with the welfare of your family, if your leisure will 
permit, will be much to the satisfaction of 

Your most dutiful Nephew, 

Nathan Hale. 

P. S. — Please to present my duty to my Aunt, and my 
fondest regards to all my cousins. If no other oppor- 



APPENDIX 137 

tunity of writing presents, please to improve that of the 

Post. 

[Addressed: "To 

Maj' Samuel Hale 
at 
Portsmouth " — ] 

[From the original MSS. in possession of Mr. Grenville Kane, Tux- 
edo, New York. Its previous owner was the late Mr. George H. 
Moore, librarian of the New York Historical Society and later of the 
Lenox Library. Now published complete. Stuart gives the body of 
the letter.] 

No. 4 

HALE TO DR. ^NEAS MUNSON AT NEW HAVEN 

New London, November 30, 1774. 
Sir, 

I am happily situated here. I love my employment; 
find many friends among strangers; have time for scien- 
tific study, and seem to fill the place assigned me with 
satisfaction. I have a school of more than thirty boys to 
instruct, about half of them in Latin; and my salary is 
satisfactory. During the summer I had a morning class 
of young ladies — about a score — from five to seven 
o'clock; so you see my time is pretty fully occupied, 
profitably I hope to my pupils and to their teacher. 

Please accept for yourself and Mrs. Munson the grate- 
ful thanks of one who will always remember the kindness 
he ever experienced whenever he visited your abode. 

Your friend, t^t tlt 

Nathan Hale. 

[From Lossing's '<Two Spies," where the last sentence is given in fac- 
simile. Mr. Lossing states that he copied it from the original in possession 
of Dr. Munson, son of the person to whom the letter is addressed.] 



138 NATHAN HALE 

No. 5 

HALE TO THE PROPRIETORS OF UNION SCHOOL, 
NEW LONDON 

John Winthrop, Esq! Capt. David Mumford 

Capt. Guy Richards Thomas Mumford, Esq"" 

Duncan Stewart, Esq! Mr. Silas Church 

Capt. Robin" Mumford Capt. Michael Mellaly 

Mr. Roger Gibson Capt. Thomas Allen 

Winthrop Saltonstall, Esq'' Capt. Charles Chadwick 

Capt. Joseph Packwood Mr. Samuel Belden 

Capt. William Packwood Jeremiah Miller, Esq. 

Capt. Richard Deshon Capt. Russell Hubbard 

Mr. John Richards Mr. Nath^ Shaw, Jun"^ 

Richard Law, Esq' Capt. John Crocker 

Mr. Timothy Green Doct": Thomas Coit. 

Gentlemen Proprietors of Union School are desired to 
meet at the School-House next Friday Evening (Feb. 24*) 
6 O'clock, agreeable to adjournment from the 3*^ Inst, to 
the rising of the Court. The matters proposed to be con- 
sidered were, the Act of Incorporation — the choice of 
proper Officers as Committee, Clerk &c, procuring a Bell, 
and what else might be thought proper. The occasion 
of the Adjournment was the smallness of the Number 
present. That there might not be the same occasion for 
another, more early Notice was directed to be given, by, 

en emen Your Humble Servant ^t tj 

N Hale 

Wednesday Feb. 22"^ A.D. 1775 

No Meeting on account of bad Weather. 

[From the Original MSS. in possession of Mr.W. F. Havemeyer, 
New York, Now first published.] 



APPENDIX 139 

No. 6 

HALE TO THE PROPRIETORS OF UNION SCHOOL, 
NEW LONDON 
Gentlemen : 

Having received information that a place is allotted me 
in the army, and being inclined, as I hope, for good rea- 
sons, to accept it, I am constrained to ask as a favor that 
which scarce anything else would have induced me to, 
which is, to be excused from keeping your school any 
longer. For the purpose of conversing upon this, and of 
procuring another master, some of your number think it 
best there should be a general meeting of the proprietors. 
The time talked of for holding it is 6 o'clock this after- 
noon, at the school-house. The year for which I engaged 
will expire within a fortnight, so that my quitting a few 
days sooner, I hope, will subject you to no great incon- 
venience. 

School keeping is a business of which I was always 
fond, but since my residence in this town, everything has 
conspired to render it more agreeable. I have thought 
much of never quitting it but with life, but at present 
there seems an opportunity for more extended public 
service. 

The kindness expressed to me by the people of the 
place, but especially the proprietors of the school, will 
always be very gratefully remembered by, gentlemen, with 
respect, your humble servant, 

Nathan Hale. 

Friday, July 7, 1775. To John Winthrop, Esq., Richard 
Law, Esq., &"c. &c. 

[From Stuart's " Life of Nathan Hale."] 



I40 NATHAN HALE 

No. 7 

HALE TO BETSEY CHRISTOPHERS 
AT NEW LONDON 

Camp Winter Hill Oct! 19*^ 1775 
Dear Betsey 

I hope you will excuse my freedom in writing to you, 
as I cannot have the pleasure of seeing & conversing 
with you. What is now a letter would be a visit were I 
in New London but this being out of my power suffer me 
to make up the defect in the best manner I can. I write 
not to give you any news, or any pleasure in reading 
(though I would heartily do it if in my power) but from 
the desire I have of conversing with you in some form or 
other. 

I onece wanted to come here to see something extraor- 
dinary — my curiosity is satisfied. I have now no more 
desire for seeing things here, than for seeing what is in 
New London, no, nor half so much neither. Not that I 
am discontented — so far from it, that in the present situa- 
tion of things I would not except a furlough wer[e] it 
offered me. I would only observe that we often flatter 
ourselves with great happiness could we see such and such 
things; but when we actually come to the sight of them 
our solid satisfaction is really no more than when we only 
had them in expectation. 

All the news I have I wrote to John Hallam — if it be 
worth your hearing he will be able to tell you when he 
delivers this. It will therefore not [be] worth while for 
me to repeat. 

I am a little at a loss how you carry at New London — 
Jared Starr I hear is gone — The number of Gentlemen is 



Hale Letters 

Collection of Rev. Edward Everett Hale 






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APPENDIX 141 

now so few that I fear how you will go through the winter 
but I hope for the best. 

I remain with esteem 

Y! Sincere Friend 

& Hble Svt. 

N Hale 

[Original in possession of the estate of the late John Mills Hale, Esq., 
Philipsburg, Pa. Now first published,] 



No. 8 

HALE TO HIS BROTHER ENOCH AT COVENTRY 

New York, May 30*\ 1776. 
Dear Brother. 

Your favor of the 9th. of May, and another written at 
Norwich, I have received — the former yesterday. You 
complain of my neglecting you ; I acknowledge it is not 
wholly without reason — at the same time I am conscious 
to have written you more than once or twice within this 
half year. Perhaps my letters have miscarried. 

I am not on the end of Long Island, but in New York, 
encamped about one mile back of city. We have been 
on the Island, and spent about three weeks there, but 
since returned. As to Brigades : we spent part of the 
Winter at Winter Hill in Genl. Sullivan's — thence w^e 
were removed to Roxbury, and annexed to Genl Spen- 
cer's — from thence we came to New York in Genl 
Heath's ; on our arrival we were put in Genl. Lord Ster- 
ling's ; here we continued a few days, and were returned 
to Genl. Sullivan's; on his being sent to the Northward, 
we were reverted to Lord Sterling's, in whose Brigade we 
now remain. In the first detachment to the Northward 



142 NATHAN HALE 

under Genl. Thomson, Webb's regiment was put down; 
but the question being asked whether we had many sea- 
men, and the reply being yes, we were erased and another 
put down in our place. 

We have an account of the arrival of Troops at Hali- 
fax, thence to proceed on their infamous errand to some 
part of America. 

Maj. Brooks informed me last evening, that in conver- 
sation with some of the frequenters at Head Quarters he 
was told that Genl. Washington had received a packet 
from one of the sherrifs of the city of London, in which 
was contained the Debates at large of both houses of Par- 
liament — and what is more, the whole proceedings of 
the Cabinet. The plan of the summer's campaign in 
America is said to be communicated in full. Nothing 
has yet transpired ; but the prudence of our Genl. we trust 
will make advantage of the Intelligence. Genl Gates 
(formerly Adjt. Genl. now Majr. Genl) is gone to Phila- 
delphia, probably to communicate the above. 

Some late accounts from the northward are very un- 
favorable, and would be more so could they be depended 
on. It is reported, that a fleet has arrived in the River ; 
upon the first notice of which our army thought it pru- 
dent to break up the siege and retire — that in retreating 
they were attack'd and routed. Numbers kill'd, the sick, 
most of the cannon and stores taken. The account is not 
authentic : We hope it is not true. 

It would grieve every good man to consider what un- 
natural monsters we have as it were in our bowels. Num- 
bers in this Colony, and likewise in the western part of 
Connecticut, would be glad to imbrue their hands in their 
Country's Blood. Facts render this too evident to admit 
of dispute. In this city such as refuse to sign the Associ- 



APPENDIX 143 

ation have been required to deliver up their arms. Sev- 
eral who refused to comply have been sent to prison. 

It is really a critical Period. America beholds what 
she never did before. Allow the whole force of our 
enemy to be but 30,000, and these floating on the Ocean, 
ready to attack the most unguarded place. Are they not 

a formidable Foe ? Surely they are. ^^^ 

[Nathan Hale.] 

[Original in possession of Rev. Edward Everett Hale. Given in Stuart.] 

No. 9 

HALE TO HIS BROTHER ENOCH AT COVENTRY 

New York June 3^, 1776. 

Dear Brother, 

Your Favour of the 9'^ of May and another written at 
Norwich I have received — the first mentioned on the 
19*^ of May ult. 

You complain of my neglecting you — It is not, I 
acknowledge, wholly without reason — at the same time 
I am conscious to have written to you more than once or 
twice within this half year. Perhaps my letters have mis- 
carried. 

I am not on Long Island, as you suppose ; but in New 
York, encamped about 1 mile back of the City. We 
have been on the Island, and spent about three weeks 
there, but since returned. 

As to Brigades : at the beginning of the Campaign we 
were at Winter Hill in Gen^ Sullyvan's; from there we 
were removed to Roxbury & annexed to Gen^ Spencers; 
we marched from that place here in Gen^ Heaths ; on our 
arrival we were put in Gtr} Lord Sterling's; here we con- 
tinued a few days and we returned to Gen^ Sullyvan's; on 



144 NATHAN HALE 

his being ordered to the northward we reverted to Lord 
SterUng, in whose Brigade we still remain. 

In the first detachment to Canada under Gen^ Thomson, 
Webb's Regiment was put down, but the question being 
asked whether we had many Seamen & the answer being 
yes, we were erased and another put down in our place. 
— Our Continuance or removal from here depends wholly 
upon the operations of the War. It gives pleasure to 
every friend of his country to observe the health which 
prevails in our army. Dr. Eli (Surgeon of our Reg*) told 
me a few days since, there was not a man in our Reg' but 
might upon occasion go out with his Firelock. Much the 
same is said of other Regiments. 

The Army is every day improving in discipline, and it 
is hoped will soon be able to meet the enemy at any kind 
of play. — My company which at first was small, is now 
increased to eighty, and there is a Sergeant recruiting, 
who, I hope, has got the other lo which compleats the 
Company. 

We are hardly able to judge as to the numbers the 
British army for the Summer is to consist of — undoubt- 
edly sufficient to cause us too much bloodshed. 

Genl. Washington is at the Congress, being sent for 
thither to advise on matters of consequence. 

I had written you a compleat letter in answer to your 
last, but missed the opportunity of sending it. 

This will probably find you in Coventry — if so remem- 
ber me to all my friends — particularly belonging to the 
Family. Forget not frequently to visit and strongly to 
represent my duty to our good Grandmother Strong. Has 
she not repeatedly favored us with her tender, most impor- 
tant advice ? The natural Tie is sufficient, but increased 
by so much goodness, our gratitude cannot be too sen- 



APPENDIX 145 

sible. I always with respect remember Mr. Huntington, 
and shall write to him if time admits. Pay Mr. Wright a 
visit for me. Tell him Asher is well — he has for some 
time lived with me as a waiter. I am in hopes of obtain- 
ing him a Furlough soon, that he may have opportunity 
to go home, see his friends, and get his Summer clothes. 

Asher this moment told me that our Brother Joseph 
Adams was here yesterday to see me, when I happened to 
be out of the way. He is in Col, Parson's Reg* I intend 
to see him to-day, and if possible by exchanging get him 
into my company. 

Yours affectionately, N. Hale. 

P. S. Sister Rose talked of making me some Linen 
cloth similar to Brown Holland for Summer ware. If she 
has made it, desire her to keep it for me. My love to 
her, the Doctor, and little Joseph. 

[Original in possession of Rev. Edward Everett Hale. Now 
published complete. Stuart gives the body of the letter.] 



No. 10 

HALE TO HIS BROTHER ENOCH AT COVENTRY 

New York, Aug. 20th. 1776. 
Dear Brother. 

I have only time for a hasty letter. Our situation has 
been such this fortnight or more as scarce to admit of 
writing. We have daily expected an action — by which 
means, if any one was going and we had letters written, 
orders were so strict for our tarrying in camp that we 
could rarely get leave to go and deliver them. For about 
6 or 8 days the enemy have been expected hourly, when- 
ever the wind and tide in the least favored. We keep a 



146 NATHAN HALE 

particular look out for them this morning. The place and 
manner of attack time must determine. The event we 
leave to Heaven. Thanks to God I we have had time for 
completing our works and receiving our reinforcements. 
The Militia of Connecticut ordered this way are mostly 
arrived. Col. Ward's Regiment has got in. Troops from 
the southward are daily coming. We hope under God to 
give a good account of the enemy whenever they choose 
to make the last appeal. 

Last Friday night, two of our fire vessels (a Sloop and 
Schooner) made an attempt upon the shiping up the 
river. The night was too dark, the wind too slack for 
the attempt. The Shooner which was intended for one 
of the Ships had got by before she discovered them; but 
as Providence would have it, she run athwart a bomb- 
catch, which she quickly burned. The Sloop by the 
light of the former discovered the Phoenix — but rather 
too late — however she made shift to grapple her, but the 
wind not proving sufficient to bring her close along side, 
or drive the flames immediately on board, the Phoenix 
after much difficulty got her clear by cutting her own 
rigging. Sergt. Fosdick, who commanded the above 
sloop, and four of his hands, were of my company, the 
remaining two were of this Reg! The Genl. has been 
pleased to reward their bravery with forty Dollars each, 
except the last man that quitted the fire-sloop who had 
fifty. Those on board the Schooner received the same. 
I must write to some of my other brothers lest you should 

not be at home. Remain 

Your friend & 
Mr. Enoch Hale. Brother Na. Hale — 

[Original in possession of Rev. Edward Everett Hale. Stuart gives 
this letter. Reprinted here with slight corrections,] 





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LETTERS OF 
HALE'S CORRESPONDENTS 



RICHARD HALE TO HIS SONS ENOCH AND NATHAN 
IN COLLEGE — THREE LETTERS 

Dear Children, 

I Rec'l your Letter of the 7*? instant and am glad to 
hear that you are well suited with Living in College and 
would let you know that wee are all well threw the 
Divine goodness, as I hope these lines will find you. I 
hope you will carefully mind your studies that your time 
be not Lost and that you will mind all the orders of Col- 
lege with care and be sure above all forget not to Learne 
Christ while you are busy in other studies, I intend to 
send you some money the first opportunity perhaps by 
Mr. Sherman when he Returns home from of the surcit 
[circuit court] he is now on. If you can hire Horses at 
New Haven to come home without too much trouble 
and cost I don't know but it is best and should be glad 
to know how you can hire their and send me word. If I 
Don't here from you I shall depend upon sending Horses 
to you by the 6* of May, — if I should have know opper- 
tunity to send you any money till May and should then 

H7 



148 NATHAN HALE 

come to New Haven and clear all of would it not do? 
If not you will let me know it. Your friends are all well 
at Coventry — your mother sends her Regards to you — 
from your kind and Loving 

Father Rich° Hale. 
Coventry Dec! 26*.^ 
A.D 1769 

I have nothing spettial to write but would by all 
means desire you to mind your Studies and carefully 
attend to the orders of Coledge. Attend not only Prayrs 
in the chapel but Secret Prayr carefully. Shun all vice 
especially card Playing. Read your Bibles a chapter 
night and morning. I cannot now send you much money 
but hope when S"" Strong comes to Coventry to be able 
to send by him what you want. . . . 

from your Loving Fath — 

RicH° Hale 
Coventry, Decf 17*^ 1770 

Loving Children — by a line would let you know that I 
with my family threw the Divine Goodness are well as 
I hope these Lines will find you. I have heard that you 
are better of the measles. The Cloath for your Coat is 
not Done. But will be Done next week I hope at firthest. 
I know of no opporttunity we shall have to send it to 
Newhaven and have Laid in with Mr. Strong for his 
Horse which his son will Ride down to New Haven for 
one of you to Ride home if you can get Leave and have 
your close made at home. I sopose that one mesure will 
do for both of you. I am told that it is not good to study 
hard after the measles — hope you will youse Prudance in 
that afare. If you do not one of you come home I don't 
see but that you must do with out any New Close till 



APPENDIX 149 

after Commensment. I send you Eight Pound in cash by- 
Mr. Strong — hope it will do for the present — 
Your Loving Father 

RicH° Hale 
Coventry August 13!^ 1771- 

[From originals in possession of Rev. Edward Everett Hale.] 



ENOCH HALE TO NATHAN AT NEW LONDON 

Lyme May 10*, A. D. 1774 
Dear Brother: 

A {^^ words by the hand of friend Noyes. You see I 
am at Lyme : but I could not come by New London. 
I left home last Thursday. Mother and Sally in a poor 
way, I fear not so well as when you was there. I came by 
the way of Lebanon, left Billey with Mr. Huntington to 
learn the Blacksmiths trade. I b[r]ought no books for 
you, I had no conveniency but left word to have them 
sent to you, if opportunity presented, Pope's Iliad & the 
5* Vol. of the late war, which I found among the books 
and placed in my chest. 

I stand in need of a pair of breaches, I know of no 
better place to purchase cloath than at New London. If 
you will oblige me so much as to go with Noyes & get as 
good & fashionable as you can but not too costly : for it 
is for every day, therefore cheeper the better, & likewise 
trimmings. Squire Noyes would be glad to see the His- 
tory of the late war, so if you will send some of the 
Volumes if you don't want them, you will oblige him 
& me. 




[From original in possession of Rev, Edward Everett Hale.] 



ISO NATHAN HALE 

T/ie original MSS. of the following letters to Elihu 
Marvin's, fune ii, IJjd, inclusive, are in posses- 
sion of the Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford. 



WILLIAM ROBINSON TO HALE AT EAST HADDAM 

Windsor (not east) Jany 20, 1773 [1774] 

Sir: — 

In my present unlucky situation I have just received 
yours of day after Thanksgiving ; from which I am at a 
loss to determine whether you are yet in this land of the 
living, or removed to some far distant and to us unknown 
region ; but this much I am certain of, that if you departed 
this life at Modos, you stood but a narrow chance for gain- 
ing a better. 

At the top of the page I denominate my present situa- 
tion unlucky ; in one sense it is so, but upon many accounts 
I can't but say that I am well pleased with it. By con- 
fining myself to a school I am deprived of the pleasure of 
many agreeable rides among my friends about the country 
in which I had determined to spend the winter ; with this 
further aggravation, that till now, you have not known 
where to direct for me, & perhaps have entertained the 
suspicion that I was careless about returning an answer to 
yours. On the other hand my school is not large, my 
neighbors are kind & clever (& summatim) My distance 
from an house on your side of the river, which contains 
an object worthy the esteem of everyone, & as I conclude 
has yours in an especial manner, is not great; why should 
I complain *? for no other reason but that I cannot enjoy 
the company of yourself, with some other special friends. 
I have lately seen your brother at the other side of the 




APPENDIX 151 

river, who informs me that he is very pleased with his 
school. . . . 

Thus far, sir, I conclude by wishing you, in your busi- 
ness, the greatest success. 

Your sincere friend 

& huml. sert. 

TIMOTHY GREEN TO HALE AT EAST HADDAM 1 

N. London, Feb. 10, 1774 

Since my last to you, the Proprietors of the new School 
House in this Town have had a meeting, and agree that 
you should take the school for one quarter, at the rate of 
$220. Dols. pr. ann. to be paid at the end of the qtr. 
of which I am desirous to acquaint you. Am not able to 
inform you when Mr. Tracy's quarter will expire, but this 
I will do when I'm acquainted by a Line from you 
whether we may depend on your taking the school, which 
you will please to write me pr. first oppo. — 

It is the desire of the Proprietors that you would come 
down two or three days before Mr. Tracy's quarter ex- 
pires that they may be certain of the school's being imme- 
diately supplied with a master — in which case it is agreed 
that your wages shall commence from the time of your 

arriving here. — I am, sir, &c. 

TiMO. Green. 

Mr. Tracy's time will be up about the middle of 
March. 

1 See p, 43 for further correspondence between Green and Hale. 



152 NATHAN HALE 

GILBERT SALTONSTALL TO HALE AT CAMP 

New Lond!! Oct.° 9^^ 1775 
D,ear Sir 

By yours of the 5*^ I see your're Stationd in the Mouth 
of Danger — I look upon y^ Situation more Perilous than 
any other in the Camp — Should have tho't the new Re- 
creuits would have been Posted at some of the Outworks, 
& those that have been inured to Service advanc'd to 
Defend the most exposed Places — But all Things are 
concerted, and ordered w*!" Wisdom no doubt — The Affair 
of D"; Church is truly amazing — from the acquaintance I 
have of his publick Character I should as soon have sus- 
pected M": Hancock or Adams as him. 

Last Saturday a ship of 200 tun run aground off Ston- 
ington loaded w^ Wheat, its the Ship that some time ago 
purposely fell into the Hands of Wallace at Rhode Island 
w*^ a load of Flower, she is owned by Christ° Champlin of 
New port, when the Fishing Boats hail'd them they gave 
no reply, and soon after run on the Shoals as above, the 
Com. of Stonington went to unloading her immediately, 
& sent off per Cap! Niles who lay in this Harbour to come 
round to Stonington to protect her against any small 
Tender that shoud happen that way, he up Anchor and 
went round forthwith; the Ship is now in this Harbour 
(came in this Morn.) her Cargo is principally taken out in 
lighters and sent to Norwich, where She will follow as 
soon as the Wind permits, for she can't beat up having 
lost her Masts in the Gale the lo'^ Sept": 

[Here follow extracts from a paper of Oct. 7, which 
"young Doc! Mumford" had just brought from New 
York. They refer to army matters on the Canada line.] 



APPENDIX 153 

I have extracted all the material News — should have 
sent the Paper but its the only one in Town and every 
one is Gaping for News. 

You'll excuse the writing, as I am in a great hurry I 
scratch away as fast as I can. . . . 

Your Sincere Friend 




Esteemed Friend 

Your various letters duly Recived, — it was no un- 
willingnefs in me that prevented my anfw? them in course 
— The honest Reason though not a reputable one, I know 
will excuse Me to you, I'll therefore give it. I defer'd 
and defer'd to the last mom* and then something turn'd 
up tantamount to a sore Finger and in fact prevented me. 

. . . Doct''. Church is in close Custody in Norwich Goal, 
the Windows boarded up, and he deny'd the use of Pen, 
Ink, and Paper, to have no converse with any Person but 
in presence of the Goaler, and then to Converse in no 
Language but English. Good God what a fall — 

You saw in the Paper the Addrefs to the King from 
the Merch*.'. &c of Manchester — Notwithstanding their 
pretending their Resources are many, and so large that 
the Americans' Nonimportation & exportation will be like 
the light dust of the Ballance, yet to every one who will 
turn it in his Thoughts, it's utterly impofsible but that y? 



154 NATHAN HALE 

prodigeous Consumption of British Wares & Merchandize 
from Georgia to Nova Scotia, encluding Canady, the Re- 
duction of w^ I consider as already compleated, must 
affect them sensibly, and they must recognize the conse- 
quence of America. — 

I wish New York was either ras'd to the Foundation, 
or strongly garison'd by the American Forces. . . . When 
the Army is new modled send me a List of the Ar- 
rangem'^ Are any of the Connecticut Companys to be 
disbanded ? the Majors &c — what are to become of them ? 

My Compliments to S. Webb, and Hull and other 
Friends — Hempsted will wait no longer — Good b'y'e 
write me a^ — the News you can muster 

y'' &c 
Nov' 27'!" 1775. Gilbert Saltonstall 



p. „. New London Dec!'. 4*^775. 

The behaviour of our Connectic^ Troops makes me 
Heart sick — that they who have stood foremost in the 
praises and good Wishes of their Countrymen, as having 
distinguished themselves for their Zeal & Fublick Spirit, 
should now shamefully desert the Cause ; and at a critical 
moment too, is really unaccountable — amazing. Those 
that do return will meet with real Contempt, with deserv'd 
Reproach — It gives great satisfaction that the Officers 

universally agree to tarry that is the Report, is it 

true or not ? May that God who has signally ap- 

pear'd for us since the commencement of our troubles, 
interpose, that no fatal, or bad Consequence may attend a 
dastardly Desertion of his Cause.^ 

1 There are several references in these letters to the conduct of some 
of the Connecticut soldiers in November and December, 1775. It ap- 



APPENDIX 155 

I want much to have a more minute Ace' of the situa- 
tion of the Camp than I have been able to obtain. I rely- 
wholly on you for information. — . . . 

Your 

G. Saltonstall 

New London Dec^ 18* 1775. 

D':.Sir. . . . 

I wholly agree with you in y? agreables of a Camp Life, 
and should have try'd it in some Capacity or other before 
now, could my Father carry on his Businefs without me. 
I propos'd going with Dudley, who is appointed to 
Comm° a Twenty Gun Ship in the Continental Navy, but 
my Father is not willing, and I can't persuade myself to 
leave him in the eve of Life against his consent. . . . 

Yesterday week the Town was in the greatest confusion 
imagineable ; Women wringing their Hands along Street, 
Children crying. Carts loaded 'till nothing more would 
stick on, posting out of Town, empty ones driving in, one 
Person running this way, another that, some dull, some 
vex'd, none pleas'd, some flinging up an Intrenchment, 
some at the Fort preparing y^ Guns for Action, Drums 
beating, Fifes playing ; in short as great a Hubbub as at 
the confusion of Tongues ; all this occasioned by the ap- 
pearance of a Ship and two Sloops off the Harbour, sup- 
pos'd to be part of Wallace's Fleet. — When they were 
found to be Friends, Vefsels from New Port with Pafsen- 
gers, y? consternation abated, and all fell to work at the 

pears that they complained of poor food, unkept promises, and a deten- 
tion in camp beyond their term of enlistment. They went home on 
their own account, and were ridiculed, hooted at and branded as 
deserters. Most of them, however, returned, and the Connecticut regi- 
ments were as large as any in the new army. 



156 NATHAN HALE 

Intrenchment, which runs from N. Douglafses to S. Bills 
Shop. — they have been at Work eversince Yesterday 
Week when the Weather would permit, they work'd Yes- 
terday at Winthrop's Neck and are at it there today. — In 
some respects we are similar to a Camp, for Sunday is no 
Day of rest now. — You would hear the small Chaps (who 
mimick Men in everything they can.) cry out "Cut down 
the Tories Trees" — there is not one of Cap^ Wil- 
lows remaining in his lot back of his House — they are 
appropriated to a better use than he would ever have put 
them to — The Breastwork is much the better for them. 

I might inform you of many little bickerings that occur 
daily, but as those who raise them are of no importance, 
and the Evils (if any.) are only local, it is not worth while 
to repeat them : Besides, you know y! Genius of the 
Town is a restlefs, discontented Spirit. 

When I have observ'd the Malice and Envy which 
rages to a Flame in so many Breasts, the Slander, the 
illiberal & ungenerous Reflections which serve as Fuel to 
those Hellish Vices, I lament the Depravity of the Human 
Heart, and fall little short of a Misanthropist : But when 
I come acrofs a Person of Candour, Reason, Justice and 
Sincerity with their attendant Virtues (I'd almost said a 
Person of either of those Endowments.) I feel a generous 
glow within me despise the base light in w^ I view'd 
Human Nature, & become reconcil'd to my Species. . . . 

The Soldiers can give no other Reason for not Enlisting, 
than the old woman's. They wou'd not, cause the wou'd not. 

My Compliments to Cap' Hull — am very sorry to hear 
of his Illnefs, hope this will find him recruited. 

I am with Sincerity 

Your Friend 

Gilbert Saltonstall, 



Leaf from Hale's Linonia Minutes 

Yale University 













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APPENDIX 157 

ROGER ALDEN TO HALE IN CAMP 

Dear Sir :^ ^- ^^^^^- ^^^^^^ ^^'^' '775- 

If you had only once thought how much pleasure it 
would have given me to receive a letter from you in your 
present character and situation, I am sure you could not 
have neglected writing to me by Captain Leavenworth. 

If the life and business of a soldier has worn off all that 
friendship and tenderness for me which you have so often 
expressed by words and actions I shall try to reconcile 
myself to the misfortune and promise myself no more hap- 
piness and satisfaction from him whom I once esteemed 
among the number of my best friends — 

The cares perplexities and fatigues of your office are 
matters sufficient to vindicate your conduct and the duty 
which you owe to your own honor and the interest of 
your country is sufficient to employ your whole time and 
to justify you in dispensing with the obligations of your 
old friends and acquaintances — 

I almost envy you your circumstances, I want to be in 
the army very much ; I feel myself fit to relish the noise 
of guns drums trumpets blunderbuss and thunder and 
was I qualified for a birth and of influence sufficient to 
procure one I would accept it with all my heart. I would 
accept of a lieutenancy but should prefer an adjutancy, 
but other more fortunate young persons are provided for 
and I poor I, must make myself contented where I am. 
Think of my condition and then imagine how highly I 
appreciate yours. Give my love and compliments to 
Keyes and Woodbridge, tell them I shall be very careful 
to answer all their letters as well as your own. After you 
have thought over all this tell yourself that no one loves 
you more than R. A. ^ . ^-^ 



158 NATHAN HALE 

THOMAS U. FOSDICK TO HALE AT CAMP 

Dear Sir, ^"^ l^o^^o^, Dec' 7, 1775. 

Ever since the uneasiness, which I have heard, persist- 
ing amongst the Connecticut Troops, I've form'd a Reso- 
lution to go down to the assistance of my countrymen, to 
facilitate which I have resigned my office as Serjeant in 
Col. Saltonstall's com'y — I make no doubt. Sir, but you 
can assist me to some such office, as I should choose to 
be in that station, under you in particular; if not, I am 
determined to come down — a hearty Boy, undaunted by 
Danger. Ensign Hurlbut will write you concerning the 

Your very hum^.l^ Servl 

Tho5 Updike Fosdick 

JOHN HALLAM TO HALE 

c, -c. New London Decf 10* 177 c 

buNDAY Evening ' ' ^ 

Dear Sir 

I rec^ yours by the Post, which tho' short, believe me 

was very acceptable; your being on Picquet is a sufficient 

excufe that you wrote no more — I must make an excufe 

for the shortnefs of mine of a similar kind; we have at 

length concluded to intrench along our Street, from Cap* 

N. Douglafs's to Cap! W^ Pack wood, which we began 

Friday afternoon, on Saterday we work'd, & likewife all 

this Day occasion'd by an alarm; & tomorrow & next Day 

we expect our Country Friends in to help us; we've had 

upwards of 200 Volunteers to work. The Alarm / 1 men- 

tion'd / was thus. Early this morning we rec^ an Exprefs 

from Stonington, that a Ship & Tender was coming into 

their Harbours & several more was seen in the Offing, a 



APPENDIX 159 

few Hours after she made her appearance rond Eastern 
Point; Judge you of the confusion, I never saw greater 
nor did I ever see Men worke with such spirit & prepare 
to fight with more resolution. 

I think it impofsible that the same numbers of Men in 
the same time could do more work tho' most of us unus'd 
to the spade & Pick ax as witnefs my hands all of a 
Blister; the particulars of our proceedings I ned not men- 
tion, but you may depend on't we did every thing we 
could; but (to our great joy) by means of a spy Glafs, as 
the ship drew nearer we discover'd her to be a Merchant- 
man. . . . 

I had like to forgot to tell you that about 100 Men 
have been at work this week past on the Ledge of rocks 
about half way from the waters edge to the top of Groton 
Hill down by Chefter which Place they mean to fortify 
well, the Col is likewife with his Men building a good 
Battery on Winthrops Neck, at the same time our in- 
trenchments go on Briskly; thus you see We have at 
Length wak'd from our Lethargy — we have so many de- 
mands for men that your Comp^ fills slow Your Enf" has 
in all about 16 Your Lieut but few what George tells me 
he has wrote you is perhaps the reason of your Lieu! Poor 
succefs — the CoP. Comp^ is not quite full. Shaw & 
Mumford by permit of the Congrefs have near a dozen 
vefsels fitting out for Powder, Dudley Saltonstall beating 
up for volunteers as he is appointed Cap* of a thirty Gun 
Frigate by the Congrefs, Cap! N. Saltonstall is his first 
Liu! there is a number of recruiting officers among us be- 
sides yours so that Your succefs is as good as you can 
expect — every Day brings acc*f of some Damage done 
our vefsels by the Gale [of] the 9*!" . . . 

am S° Y":^ J. H 



i6o NATHAN HALE 

ENSIGN GEORGE HURLBUT TO HALE AT CAMP 
Kinde Sir ^ew London Decern^ 1 1'^ 1775 

After Returning You My Sincere Thanks I would In- 
form You I RecieVjd Your Oblidging Letter Which was 
Dated of the 7* Inftant wherein You Informf me the fol- 
diers was going Home A funday — I fliould be very 
Glad fir, if You would Inform me how The Minds of our 
foldiers is — when I Came away They ware very Back- 
ward About ftaying. When I was at Roxbury, they ware 
all in Confusion, they had About 30 Under Guard that 
was bound home, I was Almoft Discou" they ware all our 
Conneticut men — you May Depend upon it, fir, they 
will all Return Again, their friends will Receive them 
Very Cool. ... I will acquaint You A Little how they 
Go on hear — when I was at Breckfast Yeasterday the 
news Come that their Was 4 (hips Turning Round fishers 
Island and The Old women began to Preach and Cry, 
we fhall all Die, — By the Great Gun Bullets, I Have not 
took fo much Pleafure fince I Have Been hear, as I did 
Yeasterday, I Long^ for You to be hear — they all hands 
worke a funday — They have Begun to Intrench all A 
Long ftreet 

But Leaft I fliould weary Your Patience I will Con- 
clude with my Compliments to Capt Hull and the Maj' if 
he is their — ^rom Your fincere Friende „ 1 

HURLBUT ^ 

ELIHU MARVIN TO HALE 
n^ Norwich 15!^ Dec^ 1775 

Three months at Cambridge and not one line, well I 
can't help it, if a Cap*? Commission has all this effect, what 
will happen when it is turned into a Colonel's . . . 

1 There are two other letters from Hurlbut to Hale in the 
Society's Collection — brief, with minor details. 



APPENDIX i6i 

Polly hears of one and another at New London who 
have letters from Mf Hale but none comes to me Polly 
says 



Mrs. Poole was at Norwich sometime since and desired 
me to enclose a letter for her which I engaged to do, but 
I was unfortunately taken sick the night before the man 
sat out, and through that indolence which you know is so 
natural to me I had neglected to write sooner so was dis- 
appointed of fulfilling my engagement . . . 

The fortifications are going on brilkly at New London 
and Groton — I hear at Stonington they are preparing to 
make the mof vigorous defence. 

James Hilhouse writes me they are preparing to give 
them a suitable reception at New Haven. The assembly 
is now sitting — nothing of their doings have as yet tran- 
spired but it is said the Governor call'd them together to 
see what shall be done with some Tories who are said to 
be troublesome in the Western part of the Colony — you 
know they are plenty there. 

We hear that a number of the settlers on the Sufque- 
hannah purchase are taken prisoners by the Pennymites — 
That assembly have taken up the matter and seem deter- 
mined to proceed to blood-sh[ed], A sad Omen to the 
happy union that has as yet subsifted between the Colo- 
nies, Could our internal enemies wish for a more favorable 
event on their side. 

I make no doubt of its being a plan of the Tory party in 
the Pennfylvania afsembly. What will be the event I know 
not but hope the allwise difpofer of affairs will not suffer it 
to proceed to a rupture between the Two Colonies — 

I am now Trefpasing on my school hours so must con- 
clude your's Elihu Marvin 

P. S. Miss Polly's compH*f to Mr. Hale— A letter 
would not be disagreeable. 



1 62 NATHAN HALE 

ROBERT LATIMER TO NATHAN HALE AT CAMP 
Dr Sir, 

As I think myself under the greatest obligations to you 
for your care and kindness to me, I should think myself 
very ungratefuU, if I neglected any oppertunity of ex- 
pressing my gratitude to you for the same. And I rely 
on that goodness I have so often experienced to overlook 
the deficiencies in my Letter, which I am sensible will be 
many, as maturity of judgment is wanting; and tho' I 
have been so happy as to be favour'd with your instruc- 
tions, you can't Sir, expect a finish'd letter from one, who 
has as yet practis'd but very little this way, especially 
with persons of your nice discernment. 

Sir I have had the pleasure of hearing by the soldiers, 
which is come home, that you are in health, tho' likely to 
be deserted by all the men you carried down with you, 
which I am very sorry for, as I think no man of any spirit 
would desert a cause in which we are all so deeply in- 
terested. I am sure was my Mammy willing I think I 
should prefer being with you to all the pleasures which 
the company of my Relations can afford me. 
I am with respect y'' Sincere 
friend & very H'ble St — 
Dec^/ 2o\\ 1775 RobT Latimer. 

TIMOTHY DWIGHT TO HALE AT CAMP 
Dear Sir, 

The many civilities I have already received at your 
hands, embolden me to trouble you with the inclos'd. 
The design you will learn from a perusal of it. As such 
a publication [" The Conquest of Canaan "] must be 
founded on an extensive subscription, I find myself neces- 
sitated to ask the assistance of my friends. To a person 
of Mr. Hale's character (motive of friendship apart) fond- 



APPENDIX 163 

ness for the liberal arts would be a sufficient apology for 
this application. As I was ever unwilling to be under 
even necessary obligations, it would have been highly 
agreeable, could I have transacted the whole business 
myself Since that is impossible I esteem myself happy 
in reflecting that the person who may confer this obli- 
gation is a Gentleman, of whose politeness and benevo- 
lence, I have already experienced so frequent, and so un- 
doubted assurances. If you will be so kind, my Dear 
Sir, as to present the inclos'd to those Gentlemen & 
Ladies, of the circle with which you are connected, 
whom you may think likely to honour the poem with 
their encouragement, and return it with their Names, by 
a convenient opportunity, it will add one to the many 
instances of esteem with which you have obliged your 
very sincere Friend, 

and most Humble Servant 

Mr. Nathan Hale c^ 

Feb. 20, 1776. 

Comp's to Capt. Hull, Mr. E. Hunt'g [Lieut. Ebenezer 
Huntington] & the rest of my acquaintance in Camp. 

I would beg the favor of you to forward a letter which 
will be delivered to you by Capt. Perit for Doct Brackett 
of Portsmouth, as you have connections there — You may 
probably do it without inconvenience. 

ELIHU MARVIN TO HALE AT CAMP 
Kinder, Norwich 11^ June 1776, 

Am much obliged for your particular history of the 
adventure aboard the prize; wish you would acquaint me 




1 64 NATHAN HALE 

with every incident of good or ill fortune which befals you 
in your Course of life. The whole journal I hope some 
time or other to peruse. You are sensible that I am not 
in a way to meet with adventures new or interesting. 
Teaching, scolding and floging is the continual round. I 
am surprised when I reflect on my situation ; once I could 
enter my school and spend my hours with pleasure, but 
them scenes are now past. In short I have come to be 
one of your fretting, teazing pedagogues and think, hard 
of quiting. For these some months I have been like a 
person half distracted. I know not what to do with my- 
self I think of this, that and the other calling and know 
not which to prefer; then my bleeding country awakes my 

attention and seems to demand me in the field 

My hearty prayer to God for my country is that he 
would preserve peace and harmony among ourselves. I 
greatly fear some of America's greatest and most danger- 
ous enemies are such as think themselves her best friends. 
In what other light can we consider such men as profess 
themselves firm friends to her cause and yet are spiriting 
up their neighbours to fall on the Merchant and compel 
him to sell his own goods at their own price. Had we 
virtue to deny ourselves our foolish passions, and assist 
each other to the end, I think we need not fear the Boasted 
power of Britain with all her train of Confederate mer- 
cenaries E. Marvin 

N. B. Nevins is on the hill every night. Polly says 
she writes by him. The Ladies are all in good spirits. 

EZRA SELDEN TO HALE AT NEW LONDON 
„. RoxBURY Camp, June 25'^ 1775 

I have just remembrance of my engagement to you as 
well as to Numbers of others which I cannot fulfill. We 



APPENDIX 165 

came into Roxbury on Sunday about Five o Clock they 
have been firing upon Roxbury a great Part of Saturday. 
[The vi'riter gives various camp incidents, such as, speak- 
ing of the Bunker Hill fight:] The number of those 
Slain in the Battle between Putnam and the Gagites is 
uncertain — By Letters from Gentlemen in Boston Gage 
has his Army Sixteen hundred w^orse than before the En^ 
gagement. . . . 

The Soldiers live in houses as many as can & more 
also But are not so healthy as those in Tents of Which 
number vi^e are Ezra Selden 

[Original letter in possession of the Boston Public Library. Printed 
in full in the Library Monthly Bulletin, November, 1900.] 

LIEUTENANT JOHN BELCHER TO HALE 
n- Stonington, July 27*, 1775. 

These may inform you that since I saw^ you, Ensign 
Hi Hard and myself have enlisted Twenty two Men, and 
as my cash is pretty much exhausted, should be glad of a 
Supply as soon as possible, and should be glad you would 
inform me by a Line what progress you have made in the 
Enlisting Way, and when I must stop my hand, and 
should be glad if our Company is not near compleated, 
you would send me over some more Blanks, as I expect 
next Monday, to make my Number, 30, at least, and I 
understand we are to march next week, and the greatest 
part of the Men I have enlisted are destitute of Guns, 
suitable to carry, which we ought to make timely provi- 
sion for. These from your humb^^ serv' 

John Belcher — 
Addressed: "To 

Lieut. Nathaniel Hale | New London." 

[Original letter in possession of Mr. W. F. Havemeyer, New York.] 



HALE'S ARMY DIARY, 1775-76 

[The original diary is in possession of the Connecticut Historical So- 
ciety, Hartford. Stuart includes it in his work, but it is reprinted here 
as corrected from the MSS. A leaf or two may be missing at the be- 
ginning, as the first entry shows that he had been on the march two or 
three days; Waterman's, where he stopped September 23, 1775, being 
near the Rhode Island line.] 

[Sept. 23^ 1775] 

Cannon, 40 or 50, heard from the last stage to the present, 
march'd 3^ O'O arr- Waterman's (a private house & 
entertainment good) after a stop or two 6}4 O'C 6/m 
[6 miles] — tarryed alnigh[t] 

24* Mch^ 6 0'e& at 8 O [C] reach'd Olney's 4 m. 10 
O'C- mch- from Olney's 2 miles & reach'd Providence 
but made no ftop. Having march'd thro the town with 
music, & mde a flit ftp at the hither part, in the road, 
came 4 miles further to / Slack's in Rehobo[th] where we 
dined. 4 O'C^- mch^ from Slacks 6 m and reach'^ D^g- 
getts in Attleborough & put up, depofitting our arms in 
the mtt^ House — Soon after our arrival join'd by the 
Maj' who set out from home the nt bef — 

25* March'd soon after sunrife — & came very fast to 
Dupee in Wrentham 9 m to Breakfaf [t]. arrd 9 O'C^ ; 1 1 

16^ 



Hale's Camp Basket, Diary, and Horn 



Connecticut Historical Society 



APPENDIX 167 

set off & 1 >^ P M arv^ Hidden Walpole & there din'd 
and tarried till 4>^ O'C' then march'd to Dedhara — 7 m 
and put up. 

Tuesday 26^^ mch'd 5 m before Breakfast to — 
For Dinner went 4^ m to Parkers — which is within 
a mile & a half from Camp. 

At our arrival in Camp found that 200 men had been 
draughted out that morning for a fishing party. Pitched 
our tents for the present in Roxb^" a little before sunset — 

Wednefday 27* Went to some of our lower works — 
12 or 15 of y- filhing party return & bring 11 Cattle & 

2 horfes — 

Thurfday 28 Filhing party return'd 

Friday 29^^ mcM for Cambridge, arv'd 3 O'C^- & en- 
camped on the foot of Winter hill near General Sullyvans 

3 com'^' [companies] Maj'' O [Captains] Shipmans, Bost- 
w[ick] 

Sat. 30* Considerable firing upon Roxbury side in the 
forenoon & some P. M. No dam^-* done as we hear. 
Join'd this day by Cp- Perril [Perrit] & Levnwth [Leav- 
enworth] about 4 O'C^' — 

Octo. 6* 1775 Near 100 Can^ fired at Roxbury from 
the Enemy. Shot off a man's arm & kill'd one cow — 

7"" Some firing from Bofton/neck. nil/mat. 

gsab. ^ y^ rainy no meet^ M- Bird. pr. [preached] 
Watertown. P. M. went to meet^ on the hill M' Smith pT 
9 Mon. 

Morn? Clear & PleaO but cold, exerf"? men 5 O'C- 1 h. — 

Tuesday 10'^ 

Went to Roxbury, dined with Doc'- Wolcott at Gen- 
eral Spencer's Lodg^^ P. M. rode down to Dorchefter, with 



1 68 NATHAN HALE 

a view to go on upon the point ; but Coll Fellows told us 
he could give us no leave as we had been informed in 
town. Return"^ to Camp 6 O'C^- 

Wed. 11*^ 

Bro^ Joseph here in the morning — went to Cam?? 12 
O'C^- sent a letter to Bro- Enoch by Sami Turner Inform'd 
by JoPf" that he was to be examin'd to day for p-.^ Saw 
Royal Flynt. pr^ to write him. Rec^ a letter from 
Gil. Salt^ & w^ inf^ y! Schooner by S- Johns taken, all 
yL men kll^ & y* 8ooo bufh'? wheat had bn taken & car- 
ried to Norwich f™ Chrif[topher] Champlin's Ihip run 
agr^ at Ston®:"^ 

Rec"^ letter 9'*^ from Gil. Salt^- Do 9* f"? John Hallam 
8^*^ E Hale 

A heavy thun' fliow'' in y? even? 

Thurf. 12 

Wrote 6 letters to N. L. faw C] [Colonel] Sage. inf^''. 
Montreal held by Montgomery St. Johns off? to Capitu- 
late but refusing to Deliver Guns Johnf-['s] terms were 
refused: but must soon furrender — 

P. M. went into Cambridge. Took the Camb^.^ Paper 
p'* 3 Coppers. 

Friday 13 

Inf-^d by L' Col! [Hall] that Col! Webb last night gave 
orders that Field Officers Lieutenants shou'"^ ware yellow 
Ribbons — put in one accordingly, wlk"^ to Mif^ [Mystick] 
for Clothes. Inform'd D'. Rofeter, Wollace trim'd by 
Capt. Hall. 

1 This "p" may mean preaching. In other words, Joseph had in- 
formed Nathan that this was the day set for Enoch to pass the usual can- 
didate's examination for license to preach. 



APPENDIX 169 

Sat. 14* 

Mounted picket guard. Gov": Grifwold at plough"^ hill 
rumours of 25,000 troops from England. 

Sab. 15* 

M! Bird pr. P. M. after meeting walk'd to Miftick. 

Tuesday 17*^ 

A Serg' Major deserted to the Regulars. 

Wed. 18^!^ 

A Private deserted to the enemy last night. — a cannon 
fplit in our float^ battery when fir? upon B. [Boston] 
Common 1 of our men kill'd another said to be mortally 
wounded. 6 or 7 more wounded — Rec^. Letters 

G. Saltonftall 16'!^ 

J. Hallam 14'*^ 

E. Hallam 15*^ 

E. Adams 16'!^ 

In M' Sah!^ Letter rec'^ News of the publifhment of 
Thomas Poole & Betsey Adams, on '^ ij^l" 

Thurfday ig'^ 

Wrote 4 letters To Mefsl' G. Salt! & John Hallam & 
to Mifses Betsey Adams & Hallam — 3 people inhabi- 
tants of Boston si to have escaped on Rox^ side last night. 
Several guns were fired at them which were heard here at 
Winter hill. This morning one of our horses wand'! down 
near the enemy's lines, but they durst not venture out to 
take him on account of Rifle[men] placed at y^ old 
Chimy ready to fire upon them. A sick man at Temples 
found to have the small pox — 

Friday 20''' 

Wet & rainy. News from Roxbury y! 9 persons, 5 of 
them inhabitants, & 4 of them Sailors made their escape 
last night from Boston to Dorchester Point, Who bring 



170 NATHAN HALE 

accounts y' 10,000 Hanoverians & 5,000 Scotch & Irish 
Troops are hourly expected in Boston. P[er] Cp' Perrit 
ref^ sunfet from Connecticut News y' Col. Jos.'' Trumbull 
Commy Gen! was at the p* of Death. 

Sat. 21^.* 

Conftant rain & for y^ moft part hard for y^ whole day. 
A letter communicated to the offl' of y? Reg! f^ G.Washgt" 
to Col. Webb with orders to see what Off!! & men will 
extend y^ term of th^: fervice f"? 6*^ Decern! to 1'.' Jan^ — 
Col. Webb ifsu'd ord? for removing a man who was yel- 
terday defcover'd to have y^ fmall pox from Temples 
h[ouse] to y? hofpital, but the Of" remonftrat! suspended 
his orders. — Sun set clear. — 

Sab. 22"^ 

Mounted piquet Guard, had charge of the advance 
Pequet. Nil mem. Miftick Comm^refufd to del! provf^ 
to Comp'- which had had nothing for y^ day. on which 
Cpt. Tuttle & 60 or 70 men went, & as it hap- terror 
inftead of force obtain'd the provifions. On Pequet heard 
Reg" at work with pick axes. One of our Centries heard 
their G. Rounds give the Counterfign which was Hamil- 
ton. Left P. guard and ret"? to Cp. at sunrise on the 

23*^ Mon — 

10 O'C! went to Cambridge w*!" Fid Com^° officers to 
Genl Putnam, to let him know the ftate of the Reg! & y' 
it was thro ill usage upon the Score of Provisions y! th^ 
wld not extend th! term of service to the 1'! of Jan^ 
1776.— 

Din'd at Browns dr^ 1 bottle wine walk'd about ftreet, 
call'd at JoQi. Woodbridges on my way & ret"? home abt. 
6. O'C! — rec"^ confirmation of day before yesterdays report 
y'Cpt. Coit mde an Admiral — Rec"^ Let. Ed Hallam 15'^ 



APPENDIX 171 

24*!* Tuesday- 
Some rain. W to Miftick with Clothes, to be washed 
(viz 4 Shirts D° Necks 5 pair Stockings. 1 Napkin 1 Table 
Cloth 1 Pillow Case 2 Linen & 1 Silk Handkerchiefs) 
P. M. Got Brick & Clay for Chimney. Winter Hill 
came down to wreftle w^ view to find our best for a wreft- 
ling match to which this hill was (lumped by Profpect — 
to be decided on Thursday insu? — Evening prayers 
omitted for Wreftling 

25 Wednesday — no letters 

26 Thursday 

grand Wreftle on Profpect Hill no wager laid 

Friday 27'!" 

Mefsl^ John Hallam & David Mumford. arr^ 

Sat 28* 

Somewhat rainy. 
Sab. 29 

Went to meeting in the barn — one exercife. After 
meeting walk'd with Cpt. Hull & M"^ Hallam to Miftic. 

Sat 28* At night Serg' of the enemy's guard deserted 
to us. 

Monday 30* 

Some dispute with the Subalterns, about Cpt Hull & 
me acting as Captains. The Col. [&] Lieut Col. full in it 
that we ought to act in that Capacity. Brigade Maj^ & 
Gen^ Lee of the same opinion. Presented a petetion to 
Gen^ Washington, for Cpt. Hull & myself requefting the 
pay of Cpts. — refus'd. Mr. Gurley here at Din! P. M. 
Went into Cambridg with M! Mumford. 
Tuesday 31 

Wrote letter to Father & Brothers John & Enoch. 
P. M Went to Cambridge, dr. wine &c at Gen! Putmans. 



172 NATHAN HALE 

Wednefday Noveni. i'* 

Mounted Pequet guard, nil mem 



Rec'd 3 Letters fr'^ S. Belden G. Salt. & Betfey Hallam. 
The 1^.' inf™"^ he had no Scarlet Coating &c also reminded 
me of 20^. due to him by way of change of a 40^ Bill 
reed for Schooling (forgot) 1^. inf""."^ that (as pr Philadel- 
phia paper) Payton Randolph died of an Apoplexy 11^ 
ult. 3'^ inf*? Sheriff Chriftopher [of New London] is dead. 

Wed, \'' 

Came off from Pequet Guard 10 O'C^ 11 d° w* to 
Cm^.^ with Cpt. Hull, dined at Gen^. Putnams w^ M' 
Learned. Inff M^ Howe died at Hartford 2 months ago, 
not heard of before. 

Col. Parfons Reg^ under arms to supprefs y® mutinous 
proceedings of Gen Spencers Reg^one man hurt in y^neck 
by a bayonet, (done yefterday). ref? to Camp 6 O'C^ — 

Thursday 1^ 

Rain conftantly some times hard. Receiv'd a flying 
Report that the Congrefs had declared independency. 
Friday 3"^ Nil mem — 

Sat. 4*!^ 

M^ Learned with myself din'd at Col. Halls'. Deac'; 
Kingsbury's son visited me. P. M. Cpt. Hull & I w^ to 
Profpect Hill. 

Sunday f^ 

A. M. Mt Learned pr. John 13. 19. excellentifsime. 
A little after twelve a considerable number of cannon from 
the Enemy in memory of the day. Din'd w! Cpt. Hull at 
Genl Putnam's. Reed news of the taking of Fort Chamble 
with 80 odd Soldiers, about 100 women & children, up- 
wards of 100 barrels of Powder, more than 200 barrels of 
pork, 40 D° of flower 2 Mortars & some cannon. The 



APPENDIX 173 

women, wives to Officers in S' Johns, who were brought 
to S' Johns & there their Husbands permitted to come 
out and after spending some time w^ them return. Alfo 
News of vefsel taken by one of our privateers fr. Phif to 
B-n w'^ io>^ pipes of wine, another from the West 
Indies with the produce of that Country. Reed a letter 
from bro. Enoch Nov. V! Coventry, per Danl Robertfon, 
who is to make me a visit to morrow. The paper in 
which the Officers sent in their names for new commifions 

return'd for more Subalterns. Enf'? Pond & put 

down th! names. Those who put down their nam[es] the 
first offer, Col! Webb & Hall, Cpts Hoyt, Tuttle, Ship- 
man, Bostwick, Perrit Levenworth Hull & Hale. Subs. 
Catland, [Catlin] 

Monday 6'!" 

Mounted Pequet guard in y^ place of Cpt Levenworth. 
A Rifleman deserted to y^ Regulars. Some wet. Day 
chiefly fpent in Jabber & Chequers. Cast an eye upon 
Young's Mem? belong! to Col. Varnum — a very good 
book. Comp! of y^ bad condition of y^ lower Pequet by 
Majf Cutter, &c. 

It is of the utmost importance y* an Officer should be 
anxious to know his duty, but of greater that he (hd care- 
fully perform what he does know : The present irregular 
State of the army is owing to a capital neglect in both of 
thefe. — 

Tuesday 7'^ 

Left Pequet 10 OG — Inf!^ Maj": Brooks app^ for this 
Reg* new Eflablishment wh occafd much uneafinefs among 
y^ Cpts. Rain pretty hard most of the day. Spent most 
of it in y^ Maj'' my own & other tents in conversation — 
(some chequers) Studied y^ best [?] method of forming 



174 NATHAN HALE 

a Reg^ for a review, manner of arranging y^ Companies, 
also of mchg round y^ review^ Officer. 

A man ought never to lose a moments time. If he put 
off a thing ff one minute to the next his reluctance is but 
increas'd. — 

Wednesday 8* 

Clean'd my gun — pld some football, & some chequers. 
Some People came out of Boston via Rox^^ Reed N. of 
Cpt. Coits taking two prizes with Cattle poultry hay, rum, 
wine &c &c. also verbal accounts of the taking of S* 
Johns. 

Thurfday 9*!^ 

1 O'C- P. M. An alarm. The Regulars landed at 
Leechmere's point to take off Cattle, our works were im- 
mediately all mann'd & a detachment sent to receive 
them, who were obliged, it being high water, to wade 
through water near wast high. While the Enemy were 
landing, we gave them a conftant Cannonade from Pros- 
pect Hill. Our party having got on to the point, marched 
in two Columns, one on each side of y^ hill with a view to 
surround y^ enemy but upon the first appearance of them, 
they m^ their boats as fast as Pofsible. While our men 
were marching on to y'^ poin*^ they were exposed to a hot 
fire from a Ihip in the bay & a floating Battery, also after 
they had pafsed the Hill. A few Shot were fired from 
Bunker's Hill. The damage on our side is the lofs one 
Rifleman taken & 3 men wounded one badly, & it is 
thought 10 or more cattle carried off. The Rifle man 
taken was drunk in a tent in which he & the one who 
reed the worft wound were placed to take care of y^ Cattle 
Horses Sac. & give notice in case y^ enemy (hould make 
an attem^* upon them. Y^ tent they were in was taken. 



APPENDIX 175 

What the lofs was on the fide of the enemy we cannot yet 
determine. — At night met with the Cpts of y^ new estab- 
lishment at Gen! — Sullyvans to nominate Subalterns. 
Lieut- Bourbank of CoU Doolittles Reg* mde my il' L* 
Serg! Chapman 2"^ & Serg^ Hurlbut Enf" 

Friday 10* 

Went upon the hill to my new Lieu! Bourbank & found 
him to be no great things. On my return, found that my 
Br. &■ Joseph Strong had been here & enquired for me. 
immediately after dinner went to Cambr. to see them 
but was too late. Went to head quarters, saw Gen^ Sul- 
lyvan, & gave him a defcription of my new L' wh said 
h wd mk inquiry concer'ng him. On my return fd [found] 
the abv U. at my tent agr-^ to my invitation. After much 
round abt talk purfuaded him to go with me to y^ Gen^ 
to desire to [be] excused from the service. Y^ Gen^ not 
being at hom[e] deferr'd it 'till anot^ time. 

Saturday 1 1*'' 

Some disputes about the arrangement of Subs — but 
not peaceable fettled 

Sunday 12*'' 

This morning early a meeting of Cpts — upon y^ above 
matter, & not ended untill near noon. No meetting A. M. 
P. M. M-: Bird pr. 

Monday 13*!" 

Our people began to dig turf under Coble Hill. In- 
liftments delivered out. At night a man of our Reg! at- 
tempted to defert to the Reg" but was taken. 

Tuesday l4*^ 

Some uneasinefs about Subs. P. M. went to Cambr. 
nil-mem. Gen^ Orders of to day contain'd an account of 



176 NATHAN HALE 

the reduction of St. Johns. Dig? Sods under Coble Hill 
Continued. 

[" Directions for the Guards " copied in here by Hale.] 

Wednesday 15^ 

Mounted Main Guard. Heard read the articles of 
Surrend of S^ Johns. Likewise an accou"* of the repulse 
of our piratical enimies at Hampton in Virginia, with the 
lofs of a number of men (in a handbill). Three deserters 
made their escape from Boston to Roxb?' last night. Two 
prifoners were taken this afternoon in the orchard below 
Plough'd Hill who with some others were getting apples. 
They bring accounts that it was reported in Boston that 
our army at S' Johns was intirely cut off. That last week 
when they attempted to take our Cattle at Sewels pint 
they kill'd 50 or 60 of our men wounded as many more 
& had not a man either kill'd or wounded whereas in 
truth we had only one that was much wounded & he is in 
a way to recover. Reed a letter from J. Hallam : 

Thurfday 16* 

Relieved from Pequet 8/^ O'C. confined James Brown 
of Cpt. Hubbel's Company for leaving the guard which 
he did yesterday towards night & did not return untill 
4 O'C! this morning when he was taken up by the Cen- 
tinal at the door of Temple's House — as it appeared he 
was somewhat difguised with liquor ordered him confined 
& reported. 

Thursday 16*!" 

Wrote two letters 1 To J. Hall"^ & 1 to G. Salt!. It 
being Thanksgiving in Connecticu* The Cp*^ & officers in 
nomination for the new army had an entertainment at 
T? House, provided Cpt. Whitney's Suttler. They were 
somewhat merry & inlifted some Soldiers, I was not 
present — 



APPENDIX 177 

About 10 or 11 O'C at night orders came for reinforc- 
ing the Pequet with 10 men from a Com?" 

Friday 17*^ 

Reed an order from Colonel Hall for taking up at the 
continental Store 4 pr Breeches 6 D° Stockf 5 D° Shoes, 
1 Shirt 1 buff Cap i pr India" Stock^.^ sHy^' of Coat! — 
all which I got but the Yd Shirt Indian Stocks 1% 
Coat? & Shoes which are to come tomorrow morn? Cpt. 
Hull w*!" some of his Sol? went w* me to Camb^^ — Re- 
turn'd after dark. Stop'd at Gen! Lee's to see about FurP 
for men enlifted who ordered y^ gen^ orders for the day to 
be read by which Furloughs are to be given by Col'f only 
& not more than 50 at a time must have them out of a 
Reg* Gen\ orders further contain'd that the Congrefs had 
seen fit to raise the pay of the officers from what they 
were & y' a Cpt upon the new eftablishment is to receive 
26^ Dollars per month a 1 & 2"^ Lieut. 18 Dollars & an 
Enf° \Q^}i Dollars. 

Saturday iS'!' 

Obtained an order from Colo. Webb upon the O.M.G. 
for things for the Soldiers. Went for them after noon re- 
turned a little after Sunset. 

Sabbath Day l9'^ 

MT Bird pr. one Service only beginning after 12 O'C} 
Text Either 8*^ 6 For how can I indure to see the evil 
that shall come unto my people ? or how can I indure to 
see the deftruction of my kindred? The difcourse very 
good, the same as preach'd to Gen^ Woofter, his Officers 
& Soldiers at New Haven & which was again preach'd at 
Cambridge a Sabbath or two ago. — Now preach^ as a 
farewell discourse. Robert Latimer the Maj""^ Son went 
to Roxbury to day on his way home. The Majr who 



178 NATHAN HALE 

went there to day & U, Hurlbut & Robert Latimer F. 
[fifer] who went yesterday return'd this even? b! ac*f that 
the Alia Man of War Station'd at N. York was taken by 
a Schooner arm'd with Spear's &c. which at first appeared 
to be going out of the Harbour & was br! too by y^Afia & 
inftead of com^ under her ftern just as (he came up Shot 
along side, the men which were before conceal'd imme- 
diately fprung up with their lances &c and went at it 
with such vigour that they soon made themselves mafters 
of the (hip. The kill'd & wounded not known. This 
account not creditted. Sergt Prentis thought to be dying 
about 12 Meridian, some better if any alterat" this evening. 

Monday 20- 

Obtain'd Furlough's for 5 men (viz) Isaac Hammon 
Jabez Minard Chriftopher Beebe John Holmes & William 
Hatch, each for 20 Days. Mounted m— Guard, 4 Pris- 
oners, nil mem. on till 10 OO when an alarm fr Camb-& 
Profpect Hill occasioned our turning out. Slept little or 
none. 

Tuesday. 21^.' 

Reliev'd by Cpt Hoyt. Sergn* Prentis very low. Colo. 
and some Cpts went to Cambr to a Court M. to Cpt. 
Hubbel's Trial adjournd from Yesterday to day. even? 
spent in converfation. 

Wednesday 22*? 

Sergt. Prentis died about 1 2 O'C^ last night. Tryed to 
obtain a furlough to go to Cape Ann and keep Thanks- 
giving, but could not succeed. Being at Gen^ Sullyvans, 
heard Gen^ Green read a letter from a member of the 
Congrefs, exprefsing wonder at the backwardnefs of the 
OP & Soldiers to tarry the winter — likewise informing 
that the men inlifted fast in Penfylvania & y^ Jersies for 



APPENDIX 179 

30/. per month. Some hints dropt as if there was to be a 
change of the [Leaf missing.] 

Saturday 25 

Last night 2 Sheep kill['d] belong? to the En"?^ — this 
morning conliderable firing between the Gentries. A 
Rifleman got a Dog from the Regulars. Col. Varnum 
offer'd a Guinea for him, the [price] that Gen! Lee had 
offered. 10 O.'C A. M. went to Cobble Hill to view. 
Another brought to the Ferry way (two there now). 
P. M. went to Camb^ Ref! Sunset. This evening reed 
Acc*f that Col. Jedediah Huntington's wife had hanged 
herfelf at Dedham. She had been delirious for the 
greater part of the time since he entered the Service, & 
was come to Dedham to see him. He met her there, 
found her as rational as ever, but within an hour after 
he left her, the melancholy tidings followed of her hav- 
ing hanged herfelf. Heard further that 200 or 300 
poor people had been set on Shore last night by the 
Regulars, the place not known, but sd to be not more 
than 6 or 8 mile from hence. Cannon were heard this 
forenoon seeming to be off in the bay and at fome dif- 
tance. — Obferv'd in coming from Cambr. a number of 
Gabines at Gen! Lee's, said to be for the purpose of forti- 
fying upon Leechmores point. 

26*!" Sunday. 

William Hatch of Major Latimer's Co. died last night, 
having been confin'd about one week, he has the whole 
time been in [?] and great part of it out of his Senses. 
His diftemper was not really known. He was buried this 
afternoon, few people attended his funeral. Reported that 
the people were fet a shhore at Chelfea, & bring ace*' that 
the Troops in Boston had orders to make an attack upon 
plough'd hill, when we first began our works there, but 



i8o NATHAN HALE 

the Officers a number of them, went to Gen- Howe & 
offered to give up their Commifsions abfolutely refusing 
to come out & be butchered by the Americans. Mounted 
Main Guard this morning. Snowy. Ll Chapman rec'd 
Recruiting ord- & set out home purposing to go as far as 
Roxb2- today. 

27 Monday. 

Nil mem. Evening went to GenL Lee's whom I found 
very much cast down, at the difcouraging profpect of sup- 
plying the army with troops. 

28 Tuesday. 

Promif'd the men if they would tarry another month 
they (hould have my wages for that time. Genl SuUyvan 
Return'd. Sent order to Frafer Q. M. to fend us some 
wood. Went to Cambr. could not be ferv'd at the ftore, 
return'd, observ'd a greater number of Gabines at GenL_ 
Lee's. Inf "^ at Cambr y* Gtn\ Putnam's Reg!_ moftly con- 
cluded to tarry another month. (This is a lie) 

29 Wednefday. 

The RegL drawn up before GenL. Sullyvan's, after he 
had made them a most excellent speech desired them to 
Signify their minds, whether they would tarry 'till the 1^.* 
of January, very few fell out, but some gave in their 
names afterward. Rec'd News of the taking of a vefsell 
loaded w^ ordinance and Stores 

30. Thurfday. 

Obtain'd a furlough for Enfin Hurlbut for 20 Days. 
Sent no letters to day on account of the hurry of bulinefs 

1^.' [December] Friday 

W- to Cambridge. A number of men, about 20 in the 
whole confin'd for attempting to go home. Our Reg' this 



APPENDIX i8i 

morning, by means of General Lee univerfally consented 
to tarry untill the Malitia came in, and by far the greater 
part agreed to flay 'till the first of Jan. 

2^ Saturday, 

Orders read to the Reg* that no one Officer or Soldier 
fliould go beyond Drum call from his al[ar]m poft. 
Went to Miftick with Gen] Sullyvan's order on M'' Fra- 
fer, for things wanted by the Soldiers who are to tarry 'till 
the 1^' of January, but found he had none. 

3"? Sunday. 

Wet weather, no pr. — Eve got an order from BG. 
SuUyvan upon Colo. Mifflin for the above mention'd Ar- 
ticles, not to be had at Erasers — 

4. Monday. 

Went to Cambridge to draw the above articles, but the 
order was not excepted, reed News y' several prizes had 
been taken by our Privateers, among which was a vefsell 
from Scotland balas'd with Coal, the rest of her Cargo dry 
goods. Cpt. Bulkley & M^. Chamberlain from Colchester 
with cheese. Purchased 107 lb at 6^ pr lb for which I 
gave an order upon Maj^ Latimer. 

5 Tuesday 

Reed News of the Death of John Bowers Gunner in 
Cpt Adam's Privateer formerly of MajL Latimer's Com- 
pany. 

6* Wednefday — 

Upon main Guard. Nil mem. Reed some letters per 
Post. Col. Doolittle Officer of the Day inf? that C°^- Ar- 
nold had arr;L at point Levi near Quebec — 

7. Thurfday. 

Went to Cambridge to draw things 



1 82 NATHAN HALE 

8 Friday. 

Did some writing. Went P. M., to draw money for 
our expenses on the road from N. L. to Roxbury, but 
was disappointed : 

9 Nil. Mem. Saturday 

Struck our tents and the men chiefly marched off. Some 
few remaining came into my room. At Night Charle 
Brown Daniel Tolbot & W" Carver return'd from Priva- 
teering, afsifted MajL Latimer in making out his pay Roll, 
fomewhat unwell in the evening. 
11. Monday 

Finish the pay roll & fettled some accounts — about 12 
O'C Maj^ Latimer fet out home, i or more Companies 
came in today for our relief 

12 Tuesday 

a little unwell yefterd and today some better this 
evening. 

13 Wednefday 

On Main Guard. Rec'd & wrote some letters. Read 
the Hiftory of Philip. 

14 Thurfday. 

Went to Cambridge vifitted Maj' Brooks, found him 
unwell with an ague. Cpt Hull Taken violently ill Yester- 
day remains very bad today, has a high fever. 

15. Friday. Nil. mem. 

16. Sat. 

Our people began the Covered way to Lechmore's 
point. 

17. Sunday. 

Went to Miftic to meeting. Some firing on our peo- 
ple at Leechmore's point 



APPENDIX 183 

18. Monday. 

Went to Cambridge to draw things. The Reg! paraded 
this morning to be formed into two companies that the 
rest of the Officers might go home. Heard in Cambridge 
that Cpt. Manly had taken another prize, with the Gov! of 
one of the Carolina's friendly to us. & the Hon. Matthews 
Efq! Mem! of the Continental Congrefs whom Govf Dun- 
more had taken & sent for Boston. 

19 Tuesday. 

Went to Cobble Hill. A Shell & a Shot from Bunker's 
Hill, the Shell braking in the air one piece fell as [and] 
touched a man's hat but did no harm. Works upon Leech- 
mores point continued. 

20 Wed. 

Went to Roxbury for money left for me by Majf Latimer 
with Gen! Spencer, who refused to let me have it without 
Security. Draw'd fome things from the Store. U. Catlin 
& Enf" Whittlefey set out home on foot. 

21 Thursday. 

Wrote a number of letters. Went to Cambridge to 
carry them where I found Ml Hemps[t]ed had taken up 
my money at Gen! Spencers and Given his receipt. I took 
it of Hempftead giving my receipt — the fum was 36^^. 
12'. o'^. Court Martial held at Gen! Putnam's at which 
Commifsary Gen! Trumbull was tryed for defrauding the 
Soldiers of their provilions. — 

22 Friday. Some Shot from the Enemy. 

23 Saturday. 

Tryed to draw 1 month's advance pay for my Company 
but found I could not have it till monday next — Upon 



1 84 NATHAN HALE 

which borrowed 76 Dollars of Cpt Levenworth, giving 
him an order on Col° Webb for the fame as soon as my 
advance pay for January should be drawn. 3^ O'C- P. M. 
Set out from Cambridge on my way home — At Water- 
town took the wrong road and went two miles directly out 
of the way, which had to travel right back again. — And 
after travelling about 11 miles put up at Hammon's New- 
town about 7 O'C- Entertainment pretty good. 

24 Sunday 

Left H? 6>^ O'C' went 8 miles to Straytons pafsing by 
Jackson's at 3 miles. Breakfafted at Strayton's. The 
snow which began before we fet out this morning increafes 
& becomes burthenfome. From Straytons 9 miles to 
Stones where we eat Bifcuit and drank cyder. 7 miles to 
Jones — din'd — arv'd 3^ O'C- — From there 2 m & 
forgot some things & went back — then return'd to Dl 
Reeds that night, paf*^ Amadons & Keiths 3 m — Good 
houses. Within ^ m of D!L Reeds mifs'd my road & 
went 2 m directly out of my way & right back travell'd 
in the whole to day 41 miles — The weather Stormy & 
the snow for the most part ancle deep 

25 Monday 

From D° Reeds 8 O'C Came 1 or 2 m and got horses 
— 4m to Hills & breakfafted — ordinary — 8 m to Jacobs 
& din'd — difmifs'd our horses — 6 O'CL arvl Keyes 11m 
put up. Good entertainment. 

26*!* Tuesday. 

6. O'C- A. M. fr K. 6m to Kindals. Breakfafted —10 m 
to Southwards din'd. Settled acc^^ w'!^ U Sage d? [?] h"^ 
16 dollars for paying Soldiers 1 month's advance pay. 
Arv*^ home a little after sunset — One heel string lame. 



APPENDIX 185 

27* Wed. 

Heel lame. W to Br. Roses Aunt Rob° Mr. Hun'°'» 
& Cpt Robf" 

28 Thurfday 

Unwell — tarried at home. 

29 Friday. 

Went to see G. C. Lyman, Call'd a D'L Kingbury's & 
M'. Strongs. 

Jan^ 1775 [1776] 

24 Wednesday — fet out from my Fathers for the Camp 
on horse back at 7^^ O'O at 11 O'O arv? a Firkin's by 
Aftiford Meeting House where left the horfes. 12^ OO 
mch*^ 3^ arvd Grosvenor's 8 m & 4)^ at Grosvenors 
Pomfret 2 m and put up — here met 9 Sold'^ f^ Windham 

25 Thurfday 

6}4 00. mch"? from G and came to Forbs 7^? but another 
Co. hav^ engaged breakfast there we were obliged to pafs 
on to Jacobs, (fr Grof" lo*^) — After Breakfast went 8 m 
to Hills & dr^ some bad Cyder in a worfe tavern. 7 — 
O'C^- arvd Deacon Reeds. 5 m Uxbridge & }4 Com^ put 
up — myfelf w!^ the remainder pafsed on to Woods 2m. 

26 Friday. 

7 O'C^- fr. Woods 4 m to Amadous Mendon break- 
fasted. 17 m. to Clarkes Medfield & put up — Co — put 
up 5 m back. 

27 Saturday 

Breakfafted at Clarkes 10 O'C mch^ about ii>^ O'O 
arv"! at Ellis' 5^ where drank a glafs of brandy & pro- 
ceeded on 5^ to Whitings arvd. 2 O'Cl Arvf at Parkers 
in Jamaica Plains but being refused entertainment was 
obliged to betake ourfelves to the Punch boll, where leav- 



1 86 NATHAN HALE 

ing the men 1 1 in N° went to Roxb^ Saw GenL Spencer 
— who tho't it best to leave the men there as the Regi- 
ment were expected there on Monday or tuesday. In- 
dians at Gen! Spencers. Ret^ to Winter hill. 

28^ Sunday — 

Went to Roxby to find barracks for 1 1 men that came 
with me, but not finding good ones ret? to Temple House 
where the men were arv? before me — In the evening 
went to pay a laft visit to General SuUyvan with Col? 
Webb & the Cpts of the Reg! 

29 Monday — Nil mem. 

30 Tuesday 

Removed from Winter Hill to Roxb^ 

Feby 4*? 1776 Sunday — 

Feb. 14*^ 1776 

Wednesday 

Last night a party of Regulars made an attempt upon 
Dorchester, landing with a very considerable body of men. 
taking 6 of our guard, difperfing the rest & burning — 
two or three houses — The Guard house was set on fire 
but extinguished. 

July 1776 

23? Report in town of the arv! of 12 [to?] twenty S. 
of the Line in S! Law- River. Doctf Wolcott & Guy 
Rich^^ Jun:: here fr"? N. L. Rec'd E fr G Saltonftall 

Aug. 21 1* 

Wednefday 

Heavy Storm at Night Much& heavy Thunder — Capt. 
Van-Wyke a Lieut & Enf of Col? M'^Dougall's Reg! 
kill[ed] by a Shock — Likewise one man in town belonging 



Army Return Reporting Hale's Death 



Original in Library of Congress, Washington 















,7^ I" ' 



^^^./^fj^t^-^j.^ 



.;.i^* 



APPENDIX 187 

to a Militia Reg! of Connecticut. The Storm continued 
for two or three hours, for the greatest part of which time 
was a perpetual Lightening and the fharpest I ever knew. 

22 Thursday — 

The Enemy landed some troops down at the narrows on 
Long Ifland. 

23. Friday — 

Enemy landed more Troops — news that they had 
marched up and taken Station near Flatbush — their 
adv^f Gds being on this side near the woods — that some 
of our Riflemen attacked & drove them back 

Aug. 23 

Friday 

from their poft burnt 2 ftacks hay and it was thought 
killed some of them — this about 12 O'Cl at Night. News 
that Our troops attacked them at their ftation near Flat-b. 
routed and drove them back 1 J^ mile. 




TRIBUTES TO HALE 

HIS CAPTURE AND DEATH 

BY UNKNOWN POET OF I776 

The breezes went steadily thro' the tall pines, 
A-saying "oh, hu-sh!" a-saying "oh, hu-sh!" 
As stilly stole by a bold legion of horse. 
For Hale in the bush; for Hale in the bush. 

"Keep still!" said the thrush as she nestled her young. 
In a nest by the road; in a nest by the road; 

"For the tyrants are near, and with them appear. 
What bodes us no good; what bodes us no good." 

The brave captain heard it, and thought of his home. 
In a cot by the brook; in a cot by the brook. 
With mother and sister and memories dear. 
He so gaily forsook; he so gaily forsook. 

Cooling shades of the night were coming apace. 
The tattoo had beat; the tattoo had beat. 
The noble one sprang from his dark hiding place. 
To make his retreat; to make his retreat. 

He warily trod on the dry rustling leaves. 

As he pass'd thro' the wood; as he pass'd thro' the wood; 

And silently gain'd his rude launch on the shore. 

As she play'd with the flood; as she play'd with the flood. 

188 



APPENDIX 189 

The guard of the camp, on that dark, dreary night. 
Had a murderous will; had a murderous will. 
They took him and bore him afar from the shore. 
To a hut on the hill; to a hut on the hill. 

The brave fellow told them, no thing he restrain' d. 
The cruel gen'ral; the cruel gen'ral; 
His errand from camp, of the ends to be gained. 
And said that was all; and said that was all. 

They took him and bound him and bore him away, 
Down the hill's grassy side; down the hill's grassy side. 
'Twas there the base hirelings, in royal array. 
His cause did deride; his cause did deride. 

Five minutes were given, short moments, no more. 
For him to repent; for him to repent; 
He pray'd for his mother, he ask'd not another; 
To Heaven he went; to Heaven he went. 

The faith of a martyr, the tragedy shew'd. 
As he trod the last stage; as he trod the last stage. 
And Britons will shudder at gallant Hale's blood. 
As his words do presage; as his words do presage. 

"Thou pale king of terrors, thou life's gloomy foe. 
Go frighten the slave; go frighten the slave; 
Tell tyrants, to you, their allegiance they owe. 
No fears for the brave; no fears for the brave." 

[From Mr. Frank Moore's " Songs and Ballads of the Revolution." It is credited to the 
year 1776, but when or where it first appeared is not stated.] 

HALE'S FATE AND FAME 

BY JUDGE FRANCIS M. FINCH 

To drum-beat and heart-beat 

A soldier marches by; 
There is color in his cheek. 

There is courage in his eye. 
Yet to drum-beat and heart-beat 

In a moment he must die. 



I90 NATHAN HALE 

By starlight and moonlight 
He seeks the Briton's camp. 

He hears the rustling flag. 

And the armed sentry's tramp. 

And the starlight and moonlight 
His silent wanderings lamp. 

With slow tread and still tread 
He scans the tented line. 

And he counts the battery guns 
By the gaunt and shadowy pine; 

And his slow tread and still tread 
Give no warning sign. 

The dark wave, the plumed wave! 

It meets his eager glance; 
And it sparkles 'neath the stars 

Like the glimmer of a lance: 
A dark wave, a plumed wave. 

On an emerald expanse. 

A sharp clang, a steel clang ! 

And terror in the sound; 
For the sentry, falcon-eyed. 

In the camp a spy hath found; 
With a sharp clang, a steel clang. 

The patriot is bound. 

With calm brow, steady brow. 
He listens to his doom; 

In his look there is no fear 
Nor a shadow-trace of gloom; 

But with calm brow and steady brow 
He robes him for the tomb. 

In the long night, the still night. 
He kneels upon the sod; 

And the brutal guards withhold 
E'en the solemn Word of God! 

In the long night, the still night. 
He walks where Christ hath trod. 



APPENDIX 191 

'Neath the blue morn, the sunny morn. 

He dies upon the tree; 
And he mourns that he can lose 

But one life for Liberty; 
And in the blue morn, the sunny morn. 

His spirit-wings are free. 

From Fame-leaf and Angel-leaf, 

From monument and urn. 
The sad of Earth, the glad of Heaven, 

His tragic fate shall learn; 
And on Fame-leaf and Angel-leaf, 

The name of hale shall burn! 

[Poem delivered in 1853 by Judge Finch, of Ithaca, N. Y., at the centennial anniversary 
of the Linonian Society, Yale College, to which Hale belonged.] 



THE LAST MOMENTS OF NATHAN HALE 

BY JOHN WITT RANDALL, M.D. 

Dear Country! Nought in death I dread. 

Save that but once I fall. 
And slumber idly with the dead 

When thou hast need of all: 
Thy living sons shall all defend. 
While I with senseless earth must blend. 

Thy cause requires a million hands 

To battle with thy foes. 
Lives numerous as the ocean sands — 

I have but one to lose! 
Yet, though the sacrifice be small. 
Disdain not, since I give thee all. 

O that my blood from out the ground, 
'Neath God's inspiring breath. 

Might at thy trumpets' piercing sound 
One instant leap from death. 

Each drop a man, each man a spy. 

Foredoomed in thy great Cause to die! 



192 NATHAN HALE 

How blest, even so to serve thee still. 

Slain o'er, and o'er and o'er! 
From field to field, from hill to hill, 

I'd chase thy cannon's roar. 
And shed my blood like show^ers of rain. 
And fall, and rise, and fall again. 

But hark! I hear the muffled drum 

Roll like a smothered wave. 
And there the columns marching come 

That bear me to my grave. 
Farewell, dear native land! This heart 
Feels but one pang as now we part. 

I only grieve because my eyes 

Thy glory may not see — 
That I can serve thee but with sighs. 

Nor more lift sword for thee; 
And mourn because life's fleeting breath 
Permits me but a single death. 

[From "Consolations of Solitude." Boston: J. P. Jewett and Co., 1856. The writer 
was the great-grandson of Samuel Adams.] 



HALE'S GRAVE AT NEW YORK 

BY JOHN MACMULLEN, A.M. 

We know not where they buried him. 

Belike beneath the tree; 
But patriot memories cluster there. 

Where'er the spot may be. 
Yes! youthful martyr! all our isle 

To us more sacred's made. 
Since on her breast thy manly form 

In death's deep sleep was laid. 

[From poem delivered before the Alumni of Columbia College, October 27, 1S58.] 



APPENDIX 193 

HALE AS A SPY 

" Perhaps there are some who think Hale was really dishonored 
because he was hung as a spy. To any such we would say, that the 
measure of infamy shifts incessantly from age to age. No unit of con- 
ventional dishonor is fixed or lasting. The very insignia of infamy in 
one age, become the honored regalia of another. The cross reserved for 
ignominious malefactors in old Judea, is now the chosen emblem of all 
that is exalted and soul-inspiring throughout Christendom. Not a few 
of the noblest escutcheons ought to bear as decorations the gallows, the 
guillotine, the garotte, or some of the innumerable instruments of tortured 
and dishonored death. The externals of attainting manifestation will 
ever have less and less value, except as they may aid to interpret the 
endurance of suffering souls. It may, perhaps, be a true rule that no 
imputed ignominy will survive as such which is not still ignominy when 
tested by the most exalted Christian standards. 

''So far as human conventionalities could achieve an unsanctified pur- 
pose, Nathan Hale died an ignominious death, and was consigned to 
infamy. But his name is not a word of infamy, and all the power of 
British arms cannot make it so. His high, actuating motives rise in 
solemn majesty before us, and make the gallows — the rogue's march, the 
mean persecution of insults, and all the machinery of disgrace — signifi- 
cant only of surrounding baseness, and of his own internal strength. His 
death proved what his life had only indicated. It showed in him a true 
heroic greatness, which could, in calm dignity, endure to die wronged 
and unasserted. The common pathway to glory is trodden with com- 
parative ease ; but to go down to the grave high-spirited but insulted, 
technically infamous, unfriended in the last great agony, with an all- 
absorbing patriotism, baffled and anxious, and burning for assurance of 
his country's final triumph — thus to have done and borne in unfaltering 
dignity, was the ultimate criterion and evidence of a genuine nobility of 
nature. Had this sharp ordeal been spared, the man's strong, true spirit 
might have remained ever unrecognized." 

[From review of Stuart's work in Putnam's Magazine, vol. vii, p. 476. May, 1856.] 

TOAST OF REVOLUTIONARY PENSIONERS 

"IX. — Captain Nathan Hale ; — the blood of such martyrs is the sure 
seed of future patriots and heroes. — 2 guns." 

[Given at a dinner of old pensioners at Hartford, August 7, 1820.] 



HALE MEMORIALS 



Monument at South Coventry, Connecticut. 

The first monument to Hale's memory was erected at his birthplace, 
Coventry, in 1846. It is a shaft of Quincy granite forty-five feet in 
height. The cost was met by the townspeople, assisted by a grant of 
twelve hundred dollars from the State. Efforts made a few years earlier 
to interest Congress in the matter had failed. Stuart gives the minor 
details connected with the erection of the monument. 

Statue in the Hartford Capitol. 

In 1887 the State of Connecticut erected a bronze statue of Hale in 
the Capitol building at Hartford. Among those who actively furthered 
the project were the late Governor Hubbard, ex-Governors Waller and 
Lounsbury, Hon. Robert Coit, Hon. Henry Barnard, Hon. E. 8. Cleve- 
land and others. The ceremonies of dedication — June 14 — included a 
prayer by Rev. Dr. Joseph H. Twichell, an address of presentation by 
the late Charles Dudley Warner, and acceptance for the State by Governor 
Lounsbury. The statue was designed by Mr. Karl Gerhardt, sculptor, 
of Hartford. 

The Athen^um Statue, Hartford. 

A bronze statue of Hale stands on the grounds of the Wadsworth 
Athenaeum, Hartford, which Mr. James J. Goodwin presented to that 
institution in 1894. No public ceremonies were held. The sculptor 
was Mr. Enoch S. Woods, of Hartford. 

194 



APPENDIX 195 

The MacMonnies Statue, New York City. 

The Society of the " Sons of the Revolution in the State of New- 
York " was the first organization to honor the name of Hale in the City 
of New York with a substantial memorial. It presented the bronze 
statue in the City Hall Park to the city on November 25, 1893 — the 
anniversary of Evacuation Day — with impressive ceremonies. A pro- 
cession of United States troops and marines with their bands, local mili- 
tary and historic organizations, delegations from other societies and the 
members of the **Sons of the Revolution" marched from Wall Street 
up Broadway to the Park, where a large and interested throng of specta- 
tors had gathered. The presiding officer at the ceremonies was Fred- 
erick S. Tallmadge, Esq., grandson of Colonel Tallmadge, Hale's friend, 
frequently mentioned in the text. Prayer was offered by the Rev. Dr. 
Morgan Dix, Chaplain-General of the Society. Mr. William Gaston 
Hamilton made the presentation address, transferring the statue from the 
Monument Committee to the hands of the society. The statue was un- 
veiled by young Miss Cornelia Montgomery and a salute of thirteen guns 
followed. President Tallmadge accepted the memorial in behalf of the 
"Sons of the Revolution" and in their name presented it, through 
Mayor Gilroy, to the City of New York. The mayor accepted the gift 
for the municipality as " one of its choicest possessions and most vener- 
ated treasures." Major-General O. O. Howard, U. S. A., made an 
address, and Rev. Edward Everett Hale, grandnephew of the patriot, 
followed as a representative of the family. The memorial is the work of 
the sculptor Mr. Frederick MacMonnies. The Monument Committee, 
through whose efforts the beautiful statue was secured, consisted of Presi- 
dent Tallmadge, ex officio, and Messrs. William G. Hamilton (chair- 
man), Francis Lathrop, George C. Genet, John C. Jay, M.D., Henry 
W. LeRoy, Robert L. Belknap, and James Mortimer Montgomery, 
secretary of the society. The statue stands on the parade-ground of 
1776, where Hale was frequently present at reviews. See p. 79. 

Memorial at Huntington, Long Island. 

Residents of Huntington, in 1894, erected a memorial of Hale in the 
form of a granite column with a fountain at the base. It commemorates 
Hale's landing there and his capture, as then supposed, at the same place. 
The unveiling exercises were held July 4. Rev. H. Q. Judd offered the 
prayer ; the late Mr. Robert Lenox Belknap, chairman of the local 



196 NATHAN HALE 

''Nathan Hale Association," delivered the historical address; Supervisor 
George M. Tileston accepted the memorial for the town; and General 
Stewart L. Woodford closed w^ith an oration. A small view of the col- 
umn is inserted on the map showing Hale's route. Mr. George Taylor," 
of " Halesite," Huntington, has placed commemorative Hale tablets on 
a boulder on the shore of the bay. 

Memorial at Norwalk, Connecticut. 

At Norwalk, where Hale changed his uniform for a schoolmaster's dis- 
guise and then crossed to Huntington, the local chapter of the Connecticut 
"Daughters of the American Revolution" has erected a pleasing memo- 
rial within the current year, 1901. A small view of it is inserted on the 
map showing Hale's route. It is an ornamental fountain for general use 
and stands opposite the City Armory, where the unveiling exercises were 
held April 19. Within the building addresses were made by General 
Russell Frost, presiding officer; Rev. Edward Everett Hale; Rev. C. M. 
Selleck, of Norwalk; and Rev. Dr. S. P. Cadman, of Brooklyn. Oppo- 
site the fountain the presentation address was made by Mrs. Samuel 
Richards Weed, Regent of the Norwalk Chapter of the " Daughters of 
the American Revolution," and Mayor Glover accepted the gift for the 
town and city. Mrs. Weed's active efforts to secure the memorial were 
liberally seconded, among others, by the pupils of the Norwalk public 
schools. 

Hale's School-houses — East Haddam and New London. 

These school-houses have recently been restored and dedicated as Hale 
memorials. Their history has been similar. Removed from their origi- 
nal sites many years ago, they were changed and used as dwellings, and 
now stand on entirely new sites, the original ground in each case being 
unavailable. 

The house at East Haddam came into possession, in 1890, of the Society 
of the "Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York," by which it 
was transferred to the "Sons of the Revolution" of Connecticut. This 
was effected through the generosity of its owner, the late Judge Attwood, 
of East Haddam, and the offices of Mr. Richard H. Greene, of the 
former society. The dedication took place June 6. Prayer was offered 
by the Rev. Dr. Warren, of the New York Society; Morris P. Ferris, 
Esq., its secretary, presented the gift; and ex-Governor Morgan G, 



. Hale's Schoolhouses as Restored 



New London 



East Haddam 



APPENDIX 197 

Bulkeley accepted it as president of the Connecticut Society. An his- 
torical address by Mr. Victor H. Paltsits, of New York, and addresses 
by Governor George E. Lounsbury, of Connecticut, and Mr. R. H. 
Greene, followed. The school-house stands conspicuously on the river 
bank, and its grounds, the gift of Governor Bulkeley, will form an attrac- 
tive park. On the same day a bronze bust of Hale, by the sculptor Mr. 
Woods, was unveiled on the site where the building originally stood near 
the ferry. 

The larger Union school-house at New London, from whose desk Hale 
went to the war, was recently purchased and restored by the Connecticut 
"Sons of the American Revolution," and by them transferred to the charge 
of the local chapter of the "Daughters of the American Revolution." 
The ceremonies took place on "Bunker Hill Day," June 17, 1901. The 
society marched through the city to the new site, escorted by detach- 
ments of regulars and marines, the Moodus Drum Corps, the Putnam 
Phalanx, public-school boys, and various bodies and delegations. Prayer 
was offered by the chaplain. Rev. Edwin S. Lines. Mr. Ernest E. 
Rogers, President of the "Nathan Hale" branch of the Connecticut So- 
ciety, delivered the address of welcome. The president of the society, 
Hon. Jonathan Trumbull, grandson of Governor Trumbull of the Revo- 
lution, replied to the address, and delivered the keys of the school-house 
to the "Daughters." Mrs. Sara T. Kinney, State Regent of the Con- 
necticut "Daughters of the American Revolution," accepted them in 
behalf of the Lucretia Shaw Chapter at New London. Hon. Walter S. 
Logan, of New York, President-General of the National Society of the 
"Sons of the American Revolution," followed with an address, and Pro- 
fessor H. P. Johnston read an historical paper. A bronze tablet in the 
school-house was unveiled by young Nathan Hale, a great-great-grandchild 
of Enoch Hale, Nathan's brother. The New London school-house now 
stands on the grounds of the "Ancientist Burial Place " in the city. Both 
buildings will be depositories of Colonial and Revolutionary relics. 




NOTES 

Place of Hale's Capture. 

The supposition that Hale was captured at Huntington was probably 
based on Hempstead's statement that the captain said he should return to 
that place. At that time, however, he assumed that the British were still 
on the Long Island side of the East River, and that such return would be 
safest and quickest. With the enemy on the New York side the problem 
changed, as it involved a longer route and the difficulty of crossing the 
river. The first account of Hale's capture appears in Thompson's "His- 
tory of Long Island," Vol. II, p. 475. He places it at Huntington and 
depends on traditions. Stuart followed him on the same lines but with 
more details, or rather traditions, all of which he does not accept. Both 
have Hale captured by the crew of an English ship in open day. Lord 
Howe says that he was apprehended at night. The Huntington story, 
also, introduces a Tory cousin of Hale's as his betrayer. This tradition 
Stuart himself demolished, and we may reject it. In Onderdonk's 
"Revolutionary Incidents," an old man, S. Wooden, is said to have 
had the account of the capture from some of the boat's crew, and another, 
R. Townsend, heard Captain Quarme, oi t\it Halifax, speak of the event. 
But the ship's log puts her " off Whitestone Point" on the 20th, and 
off " Citty Isld " on the 21st, her tenders, the Kitty and the Swift, 
being with her. The Huntington theory is thus discredited by the record. 
Later in the war the Halifax was stationed at Huntington, where sus- 
pected persons were occasionally taken up and sent to New York. 
Hale's capture may have been confounded with some after incident. 



APPENDIX 199 

The weight of evidence is in favor of New York or vicinity as the place 
of capture. We need but a line or two of some officer's report, or from 
a letter from the enemy's camp, or from Howe's headquarters papers to 
establish the point. Such proof may come to light at any moment. The 
writer's searches have not met with success as yet. 

Place of Hale's Execution. 

As stated in the text, we put this at Turtle Bay — an entirely new 
site. After discovering Howe's order, Mr. Kelby (p. 112, n.) located 
the Artillery Park near the Dove Tavern at Sixty-sixth Street and Third 
Avenue. The present writer followed him in referring to the site in his 
** Battle of Harlem Heights." Further search, however, shows that there 
were two artillery parks — the first one being at Turtle Bay. No refer- 
ence to a park at the tavern appears until October 6th. The other is 
mentioned in the orderly-books as "the artillery near headquarters" or 
the "Artillery at Turtle Bay." It is important to notice that Hale sat in 
Captain Montressor's quarters while the provost-marshal was making 
ready for the execution. Those quarters were near the Turtle Bay artil- 
lery. Hull says Montressor witnessed the execution, which would take 
him but a short distance from his tent. The old colonial camp in that 
vicinity was undoubtedly the site — not the later Dove Tavern park. See 
map and order of execution among the illustrations. 

Captains Montressor, Hull and Pond. 

The British ofiicer, Montressor, through whom Hale's last words 
reach us, had been in the engineer service in America for several years 
before the Revolution. He lived in New York and surveyed the city 
and harbor. His knowledge of the ground would make him a valuable 
man at British headquarters, and on August 14, 1776, Howe appointed 
him "aide camp to the commander in chief." On September 22d his 
quarters, of course, would be close to the Beekman mansion. Enoch 
Hale states in his diary that this officer brought the first news of Nathan's 
death to the American lines, but misspells the name as " Montezuxe." 
There are several other references to him — an interesting one appearing 
in a letter from a Lieutenant Richardson, September 24, 1776: "We 
learn by Montressor who told it to General Putnam on Sunday (Sept. 
22), while he was here with a flag of Truce & Genl. Putnam since has 



200 NATHAN HALE 

told me that during the fire they caught a number of our people who they 
had prisoners & threw them into the Flames . . . & yesterday they caught 
the Captain of a Company of Rangers & hung him immediately for a spy." 
— Pe7in. Mag. Hist. ,Yo\. XVI, p. 204. 




Captain William Hull, who learned of Hale's fate and had his last 
words from Montressor, became one of the most distinguished officers of 
his grade in the Continental army. He rose to the command of a regi- 
ment. As far as they go, both Howe's orders and Enoch Hale's diary 
confirm what he says in Hannah Adams' history (see p. 100, n.) and 
his own memoirs. He seems to have taken special pains to hand 
down the circumstancesX)@f the case as accurately as possible. The ac- 
cepted form of Hale's last words (p. 126) is the earliest form as Hull 
received them from Montressor. 



Captain Charles Pond (p. 104) continued on duty with the Schuyler 
in the Sound until December, IJTJ, when the sloop was captured off 
Huntington with part of Colonel S. B. Webb's expedition to Long Island. 
Later he commanded the Lady Spencer ; then, resigning from his regi- 
ment in 1779, he took charge of the New Defence, which in 1780 
surrendered after a desperate action at sea. On the captain's gravestone 
at Milford he is described as ** Liberty's friend." 

Hale's Capture of a Sloop (ante, p. 82). 

Stuart describes this alleged exploit and introduces a picture of it. 
Heath, who noticed everything in his memoirs, makes no mention of 
the incident. It is said to have occurred in the East River, but the Asia 
moved out of the river the day Hale arrived in New York and then fell 
down to the Narrows. On May 31st General Putnam wrote to Wash- 
ington that *« our troops have taken a small sloop for going on board the 
Asia.^' This occurred at Far Rockaway — a minor affair where the 
sloop's crew was seized for trying to smuggle provisions to the British 
ships. Hale says nothing of the exploit in his letter to Enoch about that 



APPENDIX 20I 

date. It is true that Marvin wrote to Hale, June iith, that he was 
obliged "for your particular history of the adventure aboard the prize." 
This may not necessarily mean that he was personally concerned in it. 

Hale's Crossing from Norwalk. 

Enoch Hale states that his brother crossed the Sound from Stamford. 
Hempstead says Norwalk, and he has been followed as being Hale's atten- 
dant. Enoch obtained his information in camp near White Plains, at a 
time in October when Hempstead was with the Rangers above Harlem. 
He could not have seen him then, or he would have given the substance 
of conversations with him in his diary. The sloops were at Norwalk. 

Hale's Engagement (ante, p. 51). 

About two years after the death of his first wife, or on June 13, 1769, 
Hale's father, Mr. Richard Hale, married again, his second wife being 
Abigail Adams, widow of Captain Samuel Adams, of Canterbury, near 
Coventry. Presently two of the widow's daughters were introduced into 
the family, one of whom, Sarah, was married, December 19, 1771, to 
John Hale, elder brother to Nathan. The other was Alice, or Alicia, 
Adams, who had previously been adopted by her uncle in Canterbury. 
She occasionally visited her mother, now Mrs. Richard Hale, with the 
result that Deacon Hale insisted on her remaining with them permanently. 
This was about the year 1770-71, Alice being in her fifteenth year, and 
Nathan a sophomore at college. It was not long before two of the un- 
married brothers formed a strong attachment for her, with Nathan as the 
favored one. Alice and Nathan corresponded while he was in college, 
but the mother interrupted this on account of their youth. That Deacon 
Hale objected to Alice as another daughter-in-law from the Adams side 
of the house is stated on good authority to be a mistake; on the contrary, 
he wished it, probably recognizing the young girl's fine qualities. At the 
age of sixteen Alice was prevailed upon by her mother and sister to marry 
Mr. Elijah Ripley, of Coventry, a worthy man much her senior. He 
died December 26, 1774, while Hale was teaching at New London. It 
will be noticed that when Robinson and Tallmadge (p. 51) were sound- 
ing Hale on his particular attraction at the time, Alice was Mrs. Ripley. 
She could not have been the person. Some time later, while he was in 
the service, Nathan and the now widow Alice revived their old affection 
and became engaged. After Nathan's death, Alice resolved to remain 



102 NATHAN HALE 

single, refusing several offers. She lived a widow seven years, when her 
estate became involved, and an unwelcome outlook was before her. Through 
the introduction of a friend at this time she became acquainted with Mr. 
William Lawrence, of Hartford, son of the treasurer of Connecticut, by 
whom her affairs were settled in an offer of marriage. She accepted him, 
and lived to have children and grandchildren about her. It is from the 
papers of one of the latter, the late Miss Alicia Sheldon, of Hartford, that 
the above facts are derived. For the extracts and other information the 
writer is indebted to Mr. John Habberton, of New York, himself related 
by marriage to Miss Sheldon's family. 

It is pleasant to know that there still lives in Hartford, as a connecting 
link between Hale's personal friendships and his restored memory of to- 
day, the venerable Mr. Henry A. Stillman, who well remembers "Alice 
Adams." Through associations with the family in his earlier years he 
frequently saw her. To the writer he says: "She was a smart, pretty, 
lovely old lady in 1830, when I began to call on her. Many and many 
a time I talked with her about Nathan Hale. She, with tears in her 
eyes, told of his noble character and fine talents and personal appearance. 
... I never saw her that she was not bright and sparkling. . . . Happy 
as she was in her second marriage, she never forgot Nathan Hale." She 
once possessed an ivory miniature of Hale, but it long ago disappeared. 
Her last words are given in three forms: "Tell Nathan," "Write to 
Nathan," "Where is Nathan?" Stuart has an appreciative notice of 
her. The only reference to the Adams family to be found in Hale's few 
remaining papers is the mention, in his letter to Enoch, June 3, 1776, 
of Alice's brother Joseph. He calls him "our brother Joseph Adams," 
and proposes to get him into his company. If there were any correspon- 
dence between Alice and Nathan while he was at Camp Winter Hill in 
1775, he kept all reference to it out of his diary. 

Hale and the Linonian Society (ante, p. 32). 

Stuart gives extracts from Hale's address to Linonia. It may be found 
in full at the Yale Library. He was then just entering senior year and 
the address was a farewell to the preceding class, whose valedictory was 
delivered by Elisha Billings. Being newly fledged graduates. Hale ad- 



APPENDIX 203 

dresses them as "Kind Sirs," and expresses the society's sorrow at their 
departure. "It is with the greatest reluctance," he says, "we are all 
now obliged to bid a last adieu to you, our dearest friends. Fain would 
we ask you longer to tarry, but it is otherwise determined, and we must 
comply. Accept, then, our sincerest thanks, as some poor return for 
your disinterested zeal in Linonia's cause, and your unwearied pains to 
suppress her opposers. ... Be assured that we shall be spirited in Li- 
nonia's interests, and with steadiness and resolution strive to make her 
shine with unparalleled lustre." Old graduates of the college will under- 
stand the allusion in the expression of our belief that Hale would have 
made an excellent "Statement of Facts" orator. Records at the uni- 
versity do not bear out the supposition that Hale was one of the founders 
of Linonia's library. It existed before his time. Of the early volumes 
on its shelves, including such as Hale may have contributed, few if any 
remain. Benjamin Tallmadge belonged to the new rival society, " The 
Brothers in Unity," but his friendship for Hale was undisturbed. In the 
Connecticut Historical Society there is a letter from him, written in college, 
showing that he sought Hale's criticism on some production of his. Tall- 
madge' s autograph below is from a note he wrote Hale when they were 
both teaching school. 

^ 4/ Xa^^ „^^ ^t;?;.-.^ 

-^^^^^^ ^/^ ^ ^/-^ ;^^ 

Enoch Hale and News of Nathan's Fate. 

Enoch's diary, quoted in the text, was first published by his grandson. 
Rev. Edward Everett Hale, as an appendix to his address on "Hale 
Memorial Day" at Groton, Connecticut, September 7, 1881. The 
following are the entries referring to first reports of his brother's death: 
"September 30. Afternoon. Ride to Rev. Strong's [his uncle], Sal- 
mon Brook [Ct.] . Hear a rumor that Capt. Hale, belonging to the east 
side of Connecticut River, near Colchester, who was educated at College, 
was sentenced to hang in the enemy's lines at New York, being taken as 
a spy, or reconnoitering their camp. Hope it is without foundation. 



204 NATHAN HALE 

Something troubled at it. Sleep not very well. . . . October 115. Get 
a pass to ride to New York. . . . Accounts from my brother Captain 
are indeed melancholy! That about the second week of September, he 
went to Stamford, crossed to Long Island (Dr. Waldo writes), and had 
finished his plans, but before he could get off, was betrayed, taken, and 
hanged without ceremony. . . . Some entertain hope that all this is not 
true, but it is a gloomy, dejected hope. Time may determine. Con- 
clude to go to the camp next week." See pp. 1 14-115 for further ref- 
erence. 

Hale Bibliography. 

It appears that Mr. Cyrus P. Bradley, of Hanover, New Hampshire, 
proposed writing a biography of Hale as early as 1835, Mr. Jasper 
Gilbert, of Coventry, having assisted him in collecting material. In 
1836, Mr. I. Holbrook, of Norwich, Connecticut, expressed the same 
intention. The first contribution in print was an address on Nathan 
Hale delivered by Hon. Andrew T. Judson before the South Coventry 
Hale Monument Association. It was published at Norwich in 1837. 
A memoir of Hale, supposed to be written by J. S. Babcock, of Coven- 
try, was published at New Haven in i 844. A drama, in five acts, on 
the death of Hale, written for the above association by David Trumbull, 
was issued at Hartford in 1845. Then came "Life of Captain Nathan 
Hale, the Martyr-Spy of the American Revolution. By I. W, Stuart. 
[Two editions.] Hartford, 1856." In 1 857 appeared " The Ameri- 
can Spy, or Freedom's Early Sacrifice," by J. R. Simms. B. F. 
Lossing's "Two Spies of the American Revolution — Hale and Andre " 
came later, published by D. Appleton & Co., New York. Rev. E. E. 
Hale's address on Hale memorial day, September 7, 188 1, at Groton, 
Connecticut, was published the same year, by request, by A. S. Williams 
& Co., Boston. "Nathan Hale, the Martyr-Hero," by Charlotte M. 
Halloway, was published by F. F. Neely in 1899. ^^ '^^e same year 
appeared "Nathan Hale, the Martyr-Spy," by Charles W. Brown, 
published by J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Co., New York. In addition, 
many newspaper and magazine articles have appeared on Hale ; also ad- 
dresses before patriotic societies. There are sketches of and references 
to Hale in Thompson's "History of Long Island," Onderdonk's 
" Revolutionary Incidents," Sparks' " Life and Treason of Arnold," 
Johnston's "Yale in the Revolution," etc. 



HALE'S SACRIFICE 



Full stern was his doom, but full firmly he died. 

No funeral or bier they made him. 
Not a kind eye wept, nor a warm heart sighed. 

O'er the spot all unknown where they laid him. 

He fell in the spring of his early prime. 

With his fair hopes all around him; 
He died for his birth-land — ** a glorious crime " — 

Ere the palm of his fame had crowned him. 

He fell in her darkness — he lived not to see 

The morn of her risen glory; 
But the name of the brave, in the hearts of the free. 

Shall be twined in her deathless story. 

BY J. S. BABCOCK, COVENTRY, 1844. 




hmMBMMmmMm 







Finis 
Variation of Hale's Last Words, 1 78 1 



INDEX 



Adams, Abigail, 201 ; Sarah, 201 
Adams, Alice, engaged to Hale, 52, 

201 
Alden, Roger, 29, 33, 40, 47, 70, 

88 ; letter from, 157 
Allen, Capt. Thomas, 138 
Andre, Maj., 120; and Tallmadge, 

128 
Asia, ship, and Hale, 82, 199 
Atwater, Thomas, New Haven, 3 1 

Babcock, J. S., of Coventry, on 

Hale, 49 
Beekman, James, mansion, 77 ; 
Howe's Headquarters, 116; Hale 
near, 116, 118, 122, 124 
Belcher, John, letter to Hale, 165 
Belden, Samuel, 138 
Bibliography of Hale, 204 
Bunker Hill, 9 ; Hale near, 65, 66 

Chadwick, Capt. Chas., 138 
Christophers, Betsey, 69, 73; Hale's 

letter to, 140 
Church, Dr. Benjamin, treason and 

arrest, 152-153 
Church, Silas, 138 
Coit, Capt., 59 ; Dr. Thomas, 

138 



Connecticut, in Lexington alarm, 
54; 59, 60 

Coventry, Hale's birthplace, 11 ; 
54, 55, 115; monument at, 194 

Crocker, Capt. John, 138 

Cunningham, William, provost- 
marshal, 119, cruelty to Hale, 
120, 124 

Davenport, John, 23, 31, 33 
Deshon, Capt. Richard, 138 
Dove Tavern, artillery camp, 127, 

199 
Dwight, Timothy, Hale's instruc- 
tor, 23—24 ; appreciation of him, 
32 ; tribute from, in "Conquest 
of Canaan," 130; letter to Hale, 
162 

East Haddam, Hale's school at, 40, 
41, 42, 51, 196 

Fosdick, Sergeant, 86 ; Hale on, 
146; letter to Hale, 158 

"Gazette," New London, quota- 
tions from, 55-58 
Gibson, Roger, 138 



205 



2o6 



INDEX 



Green, Timothy, engages Hale as 
teacher, 43, 44; 138; letter 
from, 151 

Hale, Billy, 16, 149 ; David, 16 ; 
Joanna, 16; John, 9, 16, 54, 81, 
115; Jonathan, 16 ; Joseph, 16, 
54; Richard, Hale's father, 10, 
14-16, 28; letters from, 147; 
Robert, 8 ; Samuel, 10, 16, 37; 
Hale to, 135 ; Susanna, 16 

Hale, Enoch, 16, 20; in college, 
21, 29 ; schoolmaster, 40 ; 49 ; 
preacher, 8 1 ; Nathan' s fate, 114; 
letter from, 149; diary, 203 

Hale, Nathan, headstone inscrip- 
tion, 4 ; ancestry, 8-1 5 ; birth, 
1 6 ; home life, 1 5—2 1 ; pre- 
pares for college, 19-21 ; at 
Yale, 22—35 J instructors of, 23 ; 
father's advice, 27; studies, 29 ; 
societies and honors, 30—32 ; 
commencement day, 33 ; per- 
sonal description of, 35 ; Dr. 
Munson's tribute, 36 ; visits his 
uncle, 37 ; the ministry, 38 ; 
schoolmaster, 39; at East Had- 
dam, 40 ; at New London, 43— 
47 ; as a teacher, 48—49 ; 
friends at New London, 50 ; en- 
gagement, 51, 201 ; the Revolu- 
tion, 54; New London speech, 
58 ; not in Lexington alarm, 59 ; 
joins the army, 60 ; resigns 
school, 61 ; recruits men, 62; 
marches to Boston, 63 ; at Camp 
Winter Hill, 65—74; marches to 
New York, 76 ; camp on Grand 
Street, 79 ; Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, 80 ; Tories, 80 ; sloop 
adventure, 82, 200; Long Island 
battle, 84—85 ; friends in ser- 
vice, 86—88 ; army anxieties, 
90-91 ; Washington and spies, 
92 ; joins the Rangers, 94—96 ; 
absent from Harlem battle, 97 ; 



the spy question, 98 ; seeks 
Hull's advice, 99; Hale's high 
views, 100— loi; starts for Brit- 
ish lines, 102; at Norwalk, 103 ; 
crosses the Sound, 104—105 ; 
disguised as spy, 105 ; at Hunt- 
ington, L. I., 106 ; dangers in 
the lines, 108-110; examines 
enemy's works, 110; British 
order on his capture, 1 1 1 ; where 
taken, 112— 115; at Beekman 
place, 116; examined and sen- 
tenced, 117; admissions, 117— 
1 1 8 ; in provost-marshal's hands, 
1 1 9- 1 20; place of execution, 
121-122, 197; executed, 122, 
198; dying vs^ords, 124-126; 
Washington and retaliation, 
127; Andre and Hale, 128; 
Dwight's tribute to, 129—130; 
Hale's letters, 133-146; letters 
to, 147—162; diary, 166 ; trib- 
utes to, 188; memorials of, 194; 
bibliography, 204 
Halifax, brig, 104, 112, 198 
Hallam, John, to Hale, 158 
Harlem Heights, battle of, 96, no 
Harvard College graduates, 9, 10, 45 
Heath, Gen., 76, 77, 79, 93 
Hempstead, Sergeant, with Hale, 

102, 105, 1 15 
Hillhouse, James, Hale's classmate, 

161 
Howe, Joseph, Hale's instructor, 23 
Howe, Lord, evacuates Boston, 75; 
at New York, 83; battle of Long 
Island, 84; new position, 90; at 
Beekman's, 116; sentences Hale, 
117; order on, ill; 118,125 
Hubbard, Capt. Russell, 138 
Hull, Capt., Hale's friend, 61, d']', 
88; counsels Hale, loo; hears of 
his fate, 114; noticed, 154, 156, 
160, 163, 172, 199 
Huntington, Rev. Joseph, Hale's 
pastor, 20, 43 



INDEX 



207 



Huntington, L. I., Hale lands at 
103-105; 107, iiz; supposed 
capture there, 198 

Hurlbut, Ensign, 86; letter to Hale, 
160 

Independence, 57; Hale on, 58; 
declared, 80, 172 

Knowlton, Col., organizes Rangers, 
94-95; Hale joins, 95; conver- 
sations with Hale, 97-98; death 
of, 96 

Latimer, Robert, to Hale, 162 
Law, Richard, i 38 
Lawrence, William, 52 
Lexington alarm, 53; Hale and, 59 
Linonian Society, Hale's member- 
ship, 30, 32; address to, 201 
Long Island, battle of, 84 

McDougall, Gen., Hale in brigade 

of, 85 
Marvin, Elihu, 33, 40, 47, 70, 88; 

letters to Hale, 160, 163 
Mead, Thomas, Hale to, 133 
Mellaly, Capt. Michael, 138 
Montressor, Capt., aide to Howe, 

114; brings word of Hale's fate, 

114, 118; notice of, 199 
Moodus. See East Haddam 
Mumford, Capt. David, 138 
Mumford, Capt. Robinson, 138 
Mumford, Capt. Thomas, 138 
Munson, Dr., Hale's friend, 36, 

47, 62; Hale to, 137 

New London, Hale teaches at, 41, 
5o> 54-55. 58, 62, 69, 76; ex- 
citement at, 158-160 

New York, Hale in camp at, 76-88; 
captured in, 114; executed at, 
1 1 i-i 12 

NorwalkjHale crosses from, to L.I., 
103-104; 201 



Packwood, Capt. William, 138; 

Capt. Joseph, 138 
Peters, Rev. Samuel, and Sons of 

Liberty, 55 
Pond, Capt. Charles, takes Hale to 

Huntington, 103-104; 200 
Poole, Elizabeth, recollections of 

Hale, 103-104 
Putnam, Gen., 68, 94, 114; meets 

Montressor, 199 

Quarme, Capt., of the Halifax, 
104-105, 1 13, 198 

Richards, John, 138; Capt. Guy, 

Robinson, William, 34, 40, 42, 47- 
49, 51 ; letter to Hale, 150 

Rutgers' orchard, and Hale's exe- 
cution, 121 

Saltonstall, Dudley, 69, 73 

Saltonstall, Gilbert, Hale's corre- 
spondent, 50, 87; letters from, 
with New London items, 152 

Saltonstall, Winthrop, 138 

Schools, Hale describes the one at 
New London, 136-137 

Schuyler, sloop. Hale crosses in, 
103—104; fate of, 200 

Selden, Ezra, 88; letter to Hale, 
164 

Shaw, Nathaniel, Jr., 138 

Sherman, Roger, 28 

Spencer, Gen., 68, 74, 143 

Spies, employment of, 92 

Stewart, Duncan, 138 

Strong, Elder John, Hale's an- 
cestor, 14; Joseph, 14, 19, 
87; Elizabeth, Hale's grand- 
mother, 13-14; his mother, 13, 
17, 19; Nathan, 19, 23-24, 49, 

87 
Sullivan, Gen., Hale in brigade of, 

63> H3 



2o8 



INDEX 



Tallmadge, Benjamin, 20, 34, 40, 
51, 87; to Andre on Hale, 128; 
note from, 203 

Tilghman, Col., Tories and retalia- 
tion for Hale, 127 

Tisdale, Nathan, schoolmaster, 45, 

49 
Tracy, Phineas, of Norwich, 151 

Trumbull, Gov., 39, 45, 63 

Trumbull, John, 23, 41 

Turtle Bay, New York, place of 

Hale's execution, 77, 1 21-123, 

199 

Union School, New London, Hale's, 
43, 45, 49, 196 

Washington, Gen., 57; at Boston, 
63; Hale joins his army, 65; at 
New York, 74, 77; defect in 
position there, 77; defeat on 
Long Island, 84—85; anxieties. 



89-93; employment of spies, 
92 ; consults with Knowlton, 
97; instructions to Hale, 10 1, 
n., 102, 104, 114; disturbed 
by Hale's fate, 126; retaliation, 
127 

Webb, Col. Charles, of Hale's 
regiment, 61, 71, 87 

Webb, Col. Samuel B., aide to 
Washington, information about 
Hale, 1 14, 200 

Webster, Noah, on school exercises, 

41 
Winter Hill, camp at, 65—75 
Winthrop, John, 138 
Wright, Asher, Hale's waiter, 1 15, 

145 

Wyllys, John P., 33, 88 

Yale College, Hale enters, 21; de- 
scribed, 24-27; Hale's com- 
mencement at, 33 




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